"It is unique in its mechanism of action relative to Neupogen and Neulasta, " he says.
And besides Epogen and Neupogen, Amgen has only one other drug on the market: Hepatitis C treatment Infergen.
That's because Amgen also announced it expects sales growth of Epogen and another drug, Neupogen, to fall below expectations.
The key question is whether the drugs in Amgen's pipeline can make up for slacking flagships Epogen and Neupogen.
"You cannot give dose-dense chemotherapy without Neupogen, " says Marc Citron, a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Brookeville, N.
Although Leukine will have to compete with both Neupogen and Neulasta, Guy is confident that sales will at least hold at current levels.
The biotech company's blockbuster drug Neupogen, which helps chemotherapy patients fight off infection, was given to all the patients who received chemotherapy more frequently.
All of these patients were given Neupogen if they needed it, but only those receiving chemotherapy every two weeks were given it all the time.
These studies could be important not only for sales of Neupogen, but also for Amgen's very similar follow-up drug Neulasta, which is longer lasting and easier to give.
The marketing experience Amgen has garnered from selling Epogen, an anemia treatment that was biotech's first blockbuster, and Neupogen, a drug used to ease the side effects of chemotherapy, certainly won't hurt either.
Lee Schwartzberg, medical director of the West Clinic in Memphis and lead author of the study, says he believes these results could cause doctors to give Neulasta (or perhaps an earlier version, Neupogen) more often.
Weinstein says Amgen (nasdaq: AMGN - news - people ) has been packaging its longer-lasting anemia drug, Aranesp, with Neupogen, a treatment for cancer-related infections, in order to convince oncologists to prescribe it.
While sales of Aranesp, for anemia, continue to exceed his expectations by 12%, other drugs, such as Epogen, an older anemia drug, and Neupogen and Neulasta, for preventing chemotherapy-related infections, are trailing his expectations by 2% to 5%.
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