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- NJ Biz
08/06//2007 - Stents that prop open clogged arteries were until recently a promising source of growth for Johnson & Johnson. But diminished sales of the devices were a large part of the reason that the health care giant said last week that it plans to slash its workforce by as much as 4 percent, or 4,820 workers.

Johnson & Johnson blamed the cuts on disappointing stent revenue and upcoming drug patent expirations. Cardiologists have been turning away from stents— mesh-like metal appliances implanted during angioplasties—for reasons which include reports that the most popular and expensive kind can increase the risk of blood clots that cause heart attacks. The reports focused on drug-eluting stents, which release medicine to prevent arteries from becoming blocked again.

But more damaging was a study this year which showed that bare metal stents failed to lower hospitalizations or death rates for patients who take medicine to treat severe but stable heart disease, says Debbie Wang, an analyst with the research firm Morningstar in Chicago.

Wang calls stent sales “slow and very soft. The market will probably bottom out this year and not be as big as it used to be,” she says.

Many factors have led to a decrease in the overall use of stents, They including the increased use of powerful statin drugs like Pfizer’s Lipitor that lower cholesterol, says Marc Klapholz, director of cardiology at The University Hospital in Newark, a part of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. In addition, drug-eluting stents themselves have reduced the need for multiple angioplasty procedures.

The market is dominated by Cypher, made by J&J subsidiary Cordis; and, Taxus Express, made by Boston Scientific unit Interventional Cardiology of Natick, Mass. For the first half of 2007, Cordis sales of $1.8 billion were off 17 percent from the same period a year earlier, while revenues of $1.9 billion for the Boston Scientific unit that makes Taxus were down nearly 22 percent.

Conor Medsystems, another J&J subsidiary, stopped testing an experimental stent in May after the device was found to be less effective than Taxus.

Wang says she “wouldn’t be surprised” if Boston Scientific followed J&J’s lead by downsizing its workforce. Boston Scientific, which has about 29,000 employees, is in a more precarious position than J&J because a much greater portion of Boston Scientific’s total sales come from stents, she says.

It was only last year that J&J battled Boston Scientific for the medical device maker Guidant, whose products include stents. Boston Scientific won the fight and subsequently sold Guidant’s stent unit to Abbott Laboratories in Chicago.

“We still see the drug-eluting stent market as a huge opportunity,” Bill Weldon, chairman and CEO of J&J, said last week during a conference call with analysts. “There have been some issues that are there. But we think this will in time resolve itself and we continue to invest in the Conor stent, for example, and others stents.”

Klapholtz says that while overall stent use is down about 15 percent across the country, the device is still a “very important treatment option.” However, The University Hospital now uses drug-eluting stents in as few as 65 percent of its stent procedures, down from about 90 percent last year, he says.

Although the increased risk of blood clots from drug-eluting stents is small, he says, cardiologists now tend to use them more cautiously. For example, doctors are now less likely to implant stents in arteries that are larger than the Food and Drug Administration’s recommended size, he says.

Compounding J&J’s problems is the loss of patent protection in the next two years for two blockbuster drugs: the antipsychotic Risperdal, which had sales of $4.2 billion last year according to Boston-based Global Insight, and Topamax, a migraine treatment with annual sales of more than $2 billion.

J&J, which makes a vast range of healthcare and drug products, has 120,500 employees worldwide and some 13,000 in New Jersey. While a spokesperson for the New Brunswick-based company calls it too early to predict where the cuts will take place, analysts expect many to occur in the Florida-based Cordis unit. The reduction is part of a plan to reduce J&J’s pretax costs by as much as $1.6 billion for 2008.

If you or a loved one have been injured during surgical placement of a stent or have been injured as a result of an implanted drug eluting stent (drug coated stent) such as the Boston Scientific Taxus stent or the Johnson & Johnson Cypher stent you may be entitled to compensation. To learn more about the stent recalls, for information regarding your legal rights, or the possiblilty of a class action lawsuit contact our stent lawyers for a free, confidential, case evaluation today. Fill out our online case evaluation form or call us toll free at 1-800-856-6405.