Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) saw its stable of new drugs strengthened at last week's meeting of European regulators. The European Medicines Agency's drug-approval panel backed its new prostate cancer drug Zytiga and its new hepatitis C treatment Incivo. As Bloomberg notes, both are presumed blockbusters that could help give J&J sales a multibillion-dollar boost.
Zytiga won approval in the U.S. earlier this year, as did Incivo, which is sold in that market by Vertex Pharmaceuticals ($VRTX) under the brand name Incivek. Citigroup's Matthew Dodds has tagged peak sales of Zytiga at $1.1 billion by 2015, while Incivo could hit $1.4 billion by the same year, Bloomberg notes.
The final European approval will have to come from the European Commission, but J&J is expected to be able to launch the drugs on the continent by the end of this year. In fact, J&J's Janssen Pharmaceutical is raring to go; Incivo medical leader Jim Witek told Bloomberg that Incivo could be on the market within days of the EC's blessing.
- read the Bloomberg story
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