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COPYRIGHT 2002 The Boston Globe
Byline: Naomi Aoki
Apr. 10--No one expected the drug Renagel to be a blockbuster. It was designed to help a subset of dialysis patients who had built up excessively high levels of calcium, and it was expected to reap revenues of roughly $200 million a year at its peak.
In 1999, several months after the drug had reached the market, however, a dramatically different picture began to emerge.
Renagel clears phosphorous from the bodies of patients whose kidneys can no longer perform that function. But unlike its rivals, it does so without using calcium, and studies were beginning to suggest that an overload of calcium was behind the unusually high rate of heart disease in dialysis patients. If the theory proved true, Renagel could improve patients' health, save lives, and become a billion-dollar-a-year drug.
"We began to think that we may be able to change the world for these patients,"' said Mike Raab, senior vice president of therapeutics and general manager of the Renagel business at Genzyme Corp.
Today, Genzyme is pinning its hopes for growth on Renagel. Sales of the dialysis drug skyrocketed in its first three years on the market, reaching $177 million last year. By 2010, the company expects sales to...
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