Adderall XR, Shire Pharmaceuticals, and a Glimpse Intothe Future

Barron’s Magazine, is a financial weekly published by Dow Jones that keeps avery close eye on the world’s financial news and the corporations that are makingnews. Recently they ran a short series of articles on Shire Pharmaceuticals andthe potential problems ahead for the company.The reason that these articles are of interest to parents of children with ADHD, is that Shire makes Adderall, AdderallXR, and Vyvanse, all major medications used for ADHDtreatment. The problems for Shire may be blessings for parents, so here are some of the details:Shire has the patent on Adderall XR, which has been a controversial medication inthe treatment of ADHD for several years now. And Shire’s patent on the drugexpires in April of 2009. This means that other companies can begin selling“generic” versions of Adderall XR (which will initially be manufactured by Shire)next spring, potentially at prices far lower than Shire’s prices for Adderall XR.Barron’s claims that Shire’s Adderall XR is the most prescribed drug for ADHD inthe world with about 23% of the market, and that of Shire’s $2.4 billion in revenuelast year, over 40% came from Adderall sales (about $1 billion). As investors lookinto the near future, and respond to what they see, Shire Pharmaceutical’s stockhas fallen over 40% since September of 2007.Vyvanse is Shire’s newest ADHD medication, a true pro-drug, where themedication’s precursors are linked to amino acids to make the medications lesslikely to be abused. At present Barron’s reports that Vyvanse has captured about7.5% of the ADHD drug market, and that it is not gaining in popularity as quickly assome had hoped.The Good News: Adderall is very popular, and by next year there may be lessexpensive forms of the medication available to families. This would be a genericform, but at least in the short-term would actually be manufactured by Shire itself but sold by two different companies.