Teva has won approval in the USA for a generic version of Wyeth’s Effexor antidepressant and said it would launch the product straight away.
The Israeli drugmaker said that it US sales of the product are running at around $152 million. Combined sales of Effexor and sustained-release product Effexor XR – still Wyeth’s most important product by a wide margin – managed a 3% gain to $918 million in the second quarter of this year.
Teva and Wyeth reached an agreement to settle patent infringement litigation over Effexor XR last October, under which Teva is thought to have agreed to delay the launch of its generic version of the sustained-release form of the drug. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
