Approved by FDA on April 28, 2011, Johnson & Johnson’s prostate cancer drug Zytiga (abiraterone) is off to a brilliant launch. Payors are covering it with relatively few restrictions, medical oncologists are using it in patients with advanced disease, and it has streaked ahead of its direct competitor Sanofi’s Jevtana (cabazitaxel), a second-generation taxane, in part by grabbing new patient share from the same post-docetaxel population.
The early success of Zytiga in the market was enabled by a complex sequence of events in pre-launch planning and...