Wall Street is agog over Merck’s new diabetes pill. Doctors, the latest reports show, are writing scrips faster than one can pour sugar in that large cup of coffee next to the keyboard.

For the week of March 9, the number of new scrips hit more than 20,350, a 3 percent iincrease, and total scrips reached more than 36,220, a 6 percent gain, according to an investor note this morning by John Boris of Bear Stearns, who cites IMS Health data. These figures are compared with the previous week, by the way.

This implies an annual run rate of $330 million this year, and he foresees 2012 Januvia sales of nearly $2.1 billion. The forecasts are helped, of course, by the interminable delays Novartis continues to suffer in winning approval for its own Galvus pill. And as a benchmark, Januvia is outpacing some other drugs, such as Lilly’s Byetta, during the same point in its launch cycle.

This the kind of performance that helps Wall Street, for the moment, forget all those Vioxx lawsuits and revere Merck ceo Dick Clark as the second coming of Roy Vagelos. Well, sort of. But lose that Engineers lawsuit and Dick is just another struggling guy with a big legal bill. On the Street, you don’t need a securities analyst to know which way the wind blows.
[tags]Galvus, Januvia, Merck, Novartis, Vioxx[/tags]