Bloomberg News
March 15, 2008
ANCHORAGE — Eli Lilly and Co.’s chief operating officer said the company should “seize the opportunity” to market its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa to teenagers and children in 2003, the state of Alaska claimed in a trial, citing a company e-mail.
John Lechleiter sent the March 17, 2003, e-mail to other company employees, noting that among child psychiatrists Zyprexa ranked “a distant third across a range of disorders” for drugs doctors were prescribing at the time. Along with Zyprexa, Lechleiter referred in his e-mail to Strattera, a Lilly drug approved for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adults.
“It appears to me that the fact we are talking to child” psychiatrists and pediatricians “and others about Strattera means that we must seize the opportunity to expand our work with Zyprexa in this same child- adolescent population,” he said in the e-mail shown at a hearing without the jury present.
Lechleiter is slated to replace Sidney Taurel as Lilly’s chief executive officer in April.
Alaska sued Lilly, the world’s largest maker of psychiatric medicines, in 2006, claiming the company withheld data on Zyprexa’s side effects on blood sugar, costing its Medicaid program millions of dollars by increasing the incidence of diabetes. The drug was approved only for adults with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The state’s attorneys said the “seize the opportunity” phrase showed the company was marketing the drug for unapproved uses, in violation of federal law.
On Tuesday, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Mark Rindler denied Alaska’s motion to introduce the e-mail as evidence because he previously dismissed the state’s claim that Lilly marketed the drug for off-label uses. The state had said marketing for off-label uses was a form of failing to warn doctors and patients.
The e-mail was flashed before the jury briefly Thursday while attorneys for the state presented portions of Lechleiter’s deposition, taken last year. The exhibit was removed immediately.
The e-mail doesn’t indicate any improper marketing of Zyprexa, Lilly spokeswoman Tarra Ryker said Friday in a phone interview.
“The wording is unfortunate,” Ryker said. “What he meant was we needed to expand our clinical work so that we are able to answer doctors’ questions about using Zyprexa in adolescent patients.”
Lilly has conducted two clinical trials studying Zyprexa in teens and is awaiting an FDA decision whether it can expand the label allowing adolescent use, she said.
Before 2007, no so-called atypical antipsychotics had been approved for adolescents, Ryker said. Doctors were prescribing these drugs, and Lilly needed to provide safety and drug information, she said.
Alaska is seeking as much as $270 million in damages. The state claims Lilly withheld information about the drug’s risks to boost sales. Sales of Zyprexa tablets rose 9 percent to $4.76 billion last year, accounting for about a quarter of Lilly’s revenue.
Lilly shares fell $1.35, or 2.8 percent Friday, closing at $47.81, the lowest point in nearly 11 years.
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