"One reason we're more efficient than (brand-name makers)is that we can hustle up business when there's a hole six months out, " Morean says.

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The playing field in that competition has just become a little friendlier to the makers of the brand name drugs: Pfizer, Sanofi, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline.

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Yet they take up to 90% of sales away from the comparable brand-name drugs whose makers risked the time and money to bring breakthrough treatments to market.

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