Almost but not quite. Rezulin was pulled nearly a year after the launch of Actos in spring of 2000. That did not make it easier for Takeda or GSK to sell TZDs since docs got nervous after Rezulin was shown to blow up the liver on a moment's notice. We split the conversions down the middle and both products kept about a 50% share until 2007 when the Nissen letter came out.
I agree with your analogy on the Cox-!! market 100%. Celebrex got cut off at the knees thanks to Vioxx and Bextra getting yanked. The drug was on track to do about $5 BILLION at peak and now does about 10% of that.
You are also correct that TAP handed over the PPI market to AZ after riding the coattails of Prilosec to the number two spot in the market. Fact is, they lost to Nexium, the AZ equivalent of Kapidex/Dexilant. Ironically, AZ continues to kick the shit out of Dex with nobody even promoting Nexium. You would think the TAP braintrust now running the show would have figured out a way to win that PPI market share. I guess that just proves that they were blessed with dumb luck they could never replicate again today.
TAP was successful because they had some great molecules and a willingness to bribe KOLs into writing Lupron and Prevacid. Nothing more. Don't believe me? Look up the article profiling Doug Durand from Business week 2002. Tap reps gave away vacations and big screen television sets to EVERY targeted specialist in their territories. What the heck, I'll just post a link to the story here:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_25/b3788094.htm
That's quite a proud history Tappers. You really were great sales people. Scumbags.