Transplanting the competition

In addition to lining up some marketing muscle against Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp. for its SangCya cyclosporine, SangStat Medical Corp. last week eliminated potential competition from another big pharma company, Abbott Laboratories, which instead will become its co-promotion partner.

When SANG (Menlo Park, Calif.) launched its SangCya liquid cyclosporine to prevent graft rejection in November 1998, the company expected to be able to compete effectively with Novartis, which markets Neoral liquid and capsule formulations as well as the original cyclosporine, Sandimmune...