After recently taking steps to undo messaging about a rival product in the EU, CSL Vifor is carrying its amends campaign west to the U.K.
Following an investigation launched earlier this year by England’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Vifor has offered to pay the National Health Service 23 million pounds sterling (about $29 million) to address concerns that the company furnished doctors with potentially misleading information about a competing product.
The CMA’s probe focused on Vifor’s communications around rival drugmaker Pharmacosmos’ intravenous iron deficiency treatment Monofer, which competes directly with Vifor’s own iron deficiency blockbuster Ferinject.
In a release, the CMA said it was specifically considering whether Vifor restricted competition by spreading misinformation to healthcare professionals about Monofer.
On the heels of the probe, which kicked off in January, Vifor has agreed to “quickly address the CMA’s competition concerns” and floated several commitments about how it can rectify its behavior, England’s competition authority explained.
Aside from the 23 million pound payout, the company says it’s willing to write to healthcare professionals to correct the record on any misleading statements about Monofer and Ferinject as well as to introduce “several measures” to prevent the spread of misleading information in the future, according to the CMA's release.
Now, the CMA will review Vifor’s proposals through Jan. 17 and decide whether to accept them. The CMA added that its formal acceptance of Vifor’s commitments would prompt the agency to cease its investigation.
"Pharmaceutical companies must think carefully when making claims about competitors—these can have real impact on the doctors and nurses making potentially life-changing decisions about treatment and, of course, on the patients themselves,” Juliette Enser, the CMA’s executive director for competition enforcement, said in a statement.
Vifor, for its part, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.
Vifor’s proposed tie-up with the U.K. follows a similar episode in the EU that played out this past spring. In April, following a two-year investigation by the European Commission (EC), Vifor proposed to launch a campaign to undo the potentially misleading messages it made about Pharmacosmos’ Monofer.
As part of the proposed deal, Vifor said it would publish updated messaging prominently on its website and in medical journals in Europe for the next 10 years. The company also pledged not to engage in external communications—written or oral—on Monofer’s safety profile for the next decade.
The EC ultimately accepted Vifor's terms in July. If the company violates its commitments, the EC may impose a fine of up to 10% of Vifor's annual turnover or 5% per day of its daily turnover during the noncompliance period.
Ferinject first hit the European market in 2007. Six years after that, the drug debuted in the U.S., where it goes by the commercial moniker Injectafer. Monofer, for its part, was approved in Europe in 2009 and 11 years later in the U.S., where it’s known as Monoferric.