Pharm Exec's Brand of the Year Applauds the Old and the New

Pharm Exec’s Brand of the Year award is itself a brand with staying power - our first recipient was Merck’s Gardasil papillomavirus vaccine, which eight years later is still going strong as one of the company’s 10 top-selling products.

This year’s winner, Teva’s Copaxone, also pins the needle on the long tail, at 17 years on the market with an equally durable safety profile against its nemesis, the elusive autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis.

But lest we be accused of being safely predictable, this year Pharm Exec decided to focus, too, on clinical and marketing achievement for an orphan-status rare disease drug, calling out Bay area start-up Corcept Therapeutics’ initiative in repurposing an old drug, mifepristone, for a new indication as the first treatment for Cushing’s syndrome, a disabling metabolic disorder that is habitually underdiagnosed.

Corcept’s KORLYM carries larger potential as the test launch for a new class of medicines to address how the “fight or flight” hormone, cortisol, works as a precursor to many chronic life-threatening conditions that affect millions of patients outside the rare disease space. It’s literally a new way to think about disease.

For our full Brand of the Year 2014 article, click here.