By Clint Cora
This case in medical sales careers looks at a scenario in the hormone replacement therapy market for menopausal women. The market leader had been a blockbuster for years but later it was made more publicly aware that the product is derived from hormones extracted from horse urine. As more and more women were becoming more eco-friendly, this news did not go over too well with many of them.
At the same time, a pharmaceutical company re-introduced a rather dormant product that was a hormone replacement drug to compete with the market leader. Both drugs relieved menopausal discomfort symptoms in female patients. But the interesting thing about this re-introduced drug was that rather than being derived from horse urine, it was sourced from a soybean plant. Chemically, it was altered to be identical to the estrogen hormone found in humans.
So in essence, this drug was considered more ‘natural’ than the market leader in two ways. First, rather than subjecting live horses to a urine extraction process and then using a product derived from horse urine, this other drug was made from plants. Secondly, rather than being a cocktail of horse hormones, this other product was identical to the human estrogen which implied that its use would not involve putting a foreign substance into the human body.
News about this alternative to the market leader made its way around groups of menopausal women and they wanted to switch to this drug rather than stay on something made from ‘horse pee’. Continue Reading
