Twelve leading brands of ten newly introduced molecules, still under patent, manufactured and marketed by top Indian companies will have to be phased out by January 1, 2005 when the country faces the TRIPS deadline. The drugs used for these best selling brands are rofecoxib, ofloxacin, clopidegrel, domperidone, omeprazole, pentaprazole, cefixime, pioglitazone, sildenafil citrate and rosiglitazone.

Since these new molecules are patented to the multinational companies, who originally developed these drugs, they will enter the market with their respective original brands. The patent holders of these drugs are Merck (rofecoxib), Johnson & Johnson (ofloxacin) Sanofi (clopidegrel), Janssen (domperidone) AstraZeneca (omeprazole) BYK-Guilden/SKF (pantaprazole), Fujisawa (cefixime), BYK-Guilden (pioglitazone), Pfizer (sildenfil citrate), SmithKline Beecham (rosiglitazone).

The popular Indian brands of these ten new molecules are Robifax, Pioglar and Caverta of Ranbaxy, Toroxx of Torrent Pharma, Zo of FDC Limited, Clopigrel of USV, Roff of Unichem, Domstal-0 of Torrent Pharma, Pan of Alkem, Zifi of FDC Limited, Rezult M of Sun Pharma and Penegra of Cadila Healthcare.

The domestic players launched all these new brands in the country within the last 24 months. Amongst the brands, Robifax (rofecoxib) launched by Ranbaxy is the largest selling brand with total sales of Rs 190 million. Toroxx (rofecoxib) launched by Torrent Pharma and Zo (ofloxacin) launched by FDC Limited follows next with sales of Rs 119 million and Rs 107 million respectively.

The other top selling Indian brands of these molecules are Clopigrel (clopidegrel) of USV with current sales turnover of Rs 103 million, Roff (rofecoxib) of Unichem with a sales of Rs 98 million, Domstal-0 (domperidone + omeprazole) of Torrent with current sales of Rs 95 million, Pan(pentaprazole) of Alkem with present sales of Rs 88 million, Zifi (cefixime) of FDC Limited with sales turnover of Rs 88 million, Pioglar (pioglitazone) of Ranbaxy with current sales of Rs 86 million, Caverta (sildenafil citrate) of Ranbaxy with sales of Rs 86 million, Penegra (sildenafil citrate) of Zydus Cadila and Rezult M (rosiglitazone + metformin) of Sun Pharmaceuticals.

Besides these leading brands of the new molecules, there are more than 100 Indian brands of these patented drugs currently manufactured and marketed by large and medium domestic players. With the patent regime commences in the country by the year 2005, all these brands too will be out of the market making a significant reduction in the sales turn over of these companies mainly in the therapeutic areas of cardiology, diabetic, anti-bacterial and oncology.