Cashing in on Opioid War: A drugmaker and its $1,300-a-month shot

NEW YORK -- A decade-old drug that was once seen as a commercial flop is getting a second chance to thrive as the fight against the opioid abuse epidemic shifts toward medical treatment in the U.S.

Alkermes' Vivitrol, a $1,300-a-month shot that helps kill the high from painkillers and heroin, is poised to get a sales boost after President Barack Obama's recent push to give millions of Americans better access to addiction medicines through expanded Medicaid coverage and extra budget funding.

At the local level, Alkermes is getting support from governors, police chiefs and judges who helped start more than 100 programs of

fering Vivitrol with counseling across 30 states. The injection's most vocal advocates include Kentucky Circuit Judge David Tapp, who first heard about the treatment in 2014 and has since been talking it up to other officials. Unlike addiction treatments like methadone, Vivitrol isn't a narcotic itself, meaning it can't be abused.

"Nobody steals Vivitrol. Nobody traffics it unless they want to get sober," said Tapp, who serves in drug-ravaged counties in south-central Kentucky. "From everything I've seen, it's working."

There's some irony in the fact that pharmaceutical companies like Alkermes and Indivior, the maker of addiction treatment Suboxone, may benefit from a national effort to curb prescription-pills abuse. For years, drugmakers faced resistance, with many rehabilitation programs focusing on abstinence-only treatments. As the crisis has reached epidemic levels with tens of thousands of Americans dying each year, the president has stepped in, and his February request for $1.1 billion in funding from Congress will go almost entirely toward medically assisted treatments.

First approved in 2006

Vivitrol's sales revival 10 years after its introduction is unusual in the pharmaceutical industry. In the years following its 2006 Food and Drug Administration approval for alcoholism, some on Wall Street saw it as a dud. "Vivitrol has been a commercial disappointment that after 10 quarters on the market still does not cover its costs," Natixis Bleichroeder analysts said in a 2008 note.

Since then, the FDA approved Vivitrol for opioid abuse, just as the epidemic was intensifying and more state-funded and government programs helped cover treatments. Vivitrol revenue rose 53 percent last year to $144.4 million as the Medicaid portion of sales doubled, making up almost 30 percent of the total. Analysts anticipate sales will rise 31 percent to $189 million this year, accounting for more than a quarter of Alkermes's revenue -- with some help from the attention and funding out of Washington.

To push for changes, Alkermes spent about $4 million on lobbying last year, including on addiction bills, up from $2.6 million in 2014 and under $1 million in prior years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The active ingredient in Vivitrol, naltrexone, binds to the same receptors in the brain as opioids and blocks the pleasurable feelings associated with taking narcotics.

This story was originally published April 14, 2016 at 11:59 PM with the headline "Cashing in on Opioid War: A drugmaker and its $1,300-a-month shot ."