• The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 17, 2008 10:30 AM

Modifying old drugs and finding new uses for them has accounted for 27% of GlaxoSmithKline PLC's sales growth over the last seven years. The drug giant usually rolls out the modified drugs just as the originals lose patent protection and face generic competition.

For example, Glaxo says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved Treximet, a drug for migraines that combines Glaxo's older drug Imitrex with an over-the-counter painkiller. Imitrex is expected to face generic competition this year. Other product-line extensions Glaxo hopes to start selling in 2008 are Lamictal XR for epilepsy and Requip XL for Parkinson's disease.

Glaxo says the product-line extensions represent real scientific advances and offer new benefits to patients, such as allowing them to take one pill a day instead of two. But insurers and health systems are beginning to balk at covering the modified products because generics are significantly cheaper than the new modified drugs.

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