Gardasil, RotaTeq sales top Merck quarterly report

As we've written previously, corporate financial reports aren't exactly our forte. However, the price of Gardasil (and, to a lesser extent, RotaTeq) have been prominent in policy discussions both in the U.S. and internationally, so this week's sales news from Merck is worth noting here.

This Merck document includes a table listing sales for various vaccines in the third quarter of 2007. Among the highlights:

• Gardasil: $418 million in sales
  
• RotaTeq: $171 million in sales
  
• Zostavax: $61 million in sales
  
• All other vaccines: $593 million in sales
  

Remembering that these numbers represent only three months of sales, we can see clearly that the days in which vaccines were not thought of as potential profit centers for the pharmaceutical industry are long over. (Moreover, most European vaccine sales are not included in these figures, making the true totals even higher.)

Here's coverage from Reuters and the Associated Press, which reports that total Gardasil sales for the first 9 months of 2007 is $1.14 billion. Also of interest is the detailed news release from Merck. According to is, Gardasil has now been approved in 86 countries (with 50 more pending) and RotaTeq is approved in 69 countries.

There's no doubt that many hope that these remarkable sales figures is the U.S. and elsewhere will encourage Merck to expand its programs (like this one) to deliver free or low-cost vaccines to those parts of the world that would benefit most from them.