Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from the line of Rachael McMinn with Cowen & Company. Please state your question.
Rachael McMinn - Cowen & Company
Thanks very much. I guess some longer term vision questions, as well as near-term questions. When you give your peak sales number of $1 billion, I guess how are you thinking about the overall MRSA market and what the CUBICIN share is and I guess the nearer term implications of the economy as well?
Mike Bonney
Rob.
Rob Perez
Well, sure, hi, Rachael, it's Rob.
Well really, to get to $1 billion in the US. CUBICIN needs to get to the mid to high teens overall. So we are not talking about a dominant market position, simply a mid to high teens share overall for that kind of a peak sales number.
Mike Bonney
We’ve also embedded in our assumptions, Rachael, and we've talked about this quite a bit in the past is that we expect the growth in the days of this market to continue but to continue to grow at a declining rate.
Although last five or six years this market has grown roughly between eight and 13% per year depending upon the year and we predict over time that that rate of growth will decline to the mid, in fact even to the low single digits. And in that context the share numbers that Rob was talking about gets you to the $1 billion.
Rob Perez
And as far as the economic question, we've been asked whether we've seen any direct impact on our business and we really haven't seen an impact. The, the biggest objection with Cubicin has been since the first days of launch, the cost of the drug versus the cost of vancomycin. So the idea that we are hearing that objection, is that's kind of been there all along. We have as David mentioned kind of taken into account that hospitals are likely going to be a little bit more cash strapped as they move into 2009 and beyond and we want to make sure that we are being a little conservative if they are likely in order to look at more expensive drugs.
Mike Bonney
We think Rachael that part of the economic condition may in fact reduce elective surgery as an example, which will have an impact on census in hospitals, which we know is closely correlated with the degree to which IV antibiotics need to be used.
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