Novartis says new blood pressure drugs work well

Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis unveiled data on Wednesday on two new hypertension drugs, Rasilez and Exforge, saying tests had demonstrated they were effective at lowering blood pressure.

Novartis said studies on Rasilez, co-developed with Speedel, showed that it significantly lowered blood pressure over a sustained period of 24 hours, both alone or when used in combination with a common diuretic known as HCTZ.

The results confirm positive outcomes from previous studies and could prove significant given the huge sales potential for treatments for hypertension, thought to affect 1 billion people worldwide, and a major cause of heart attacks, the No. 1 global killer.

Analysts welcomed the news, sending Novartis's shares up 0.79 percent to 70.05 Swiss francs by 0918 GMT, outperforming the European drugs sector which was 0.36 percent higher by that time.

"This confirms the thesis that a lot of good news can be expected from (Novartis's) pipeline," private bank Wegelin & Co said in its daily research note.

The oral medicine Rasilez is a first-of-a-kind treatment because it acts within the body's renin system, which is central to blood pressure regulation. It may also help protect the patient's organs from blood-pressure-related damage.

Novartis will release further detail at an American Society of Hypertension (ASH) meeting in New York. Rasilez - the most important item on the ASH agenda - is expected to be a multibillion-dollar seller for Novartis.

Analysts expect the new data and physician feedback at the conference to be positive, with Merrill Lynch saying markets may have underestimated the potential for Rasilez. Merrill has said Rasilez has the potential for $1 billion in sales by 2011.

A positive showing could lead to broker upgrades and boost the share prices of Novartis and Speedel, a Swiss biotech firm whose fortunes are heavily dependent on its share of revenues from the product.

Novartis is seeking ways to shore up its cardiovascular and hypertension franchise, currently supported by its drug Diovan, which produced a whopping $3.7 billion in sales in 2005 but will lose its patent protection in 2012.

"We continue to believe that these products will shore up the cardiovascular franchise at Novartis and mitigate against any steep falls in sales when the flagship product Diovan goes off patent," said analysts at Morgan Stanley after the ASH data.

EXFORGE

Separately, Novartis released new data on Exforge, a once-daily tablet that combines two blood-pressure treatments - Novartis's valsartan, which it markets under the name of Diovan, and amlodipine, which Pfizer Inc markets as Norvasc.

The first results available from late-stage trials showed that Exforge provided strong blood pressure reduction in patients with severe to moderate hypertension, Novartis said.