Yanping Chen Oxyglobin should be the first There were some debates of marketing strategy made the management level of Biopure very headache. Should Oxyglobin been introduced to the market earlier than Hemopure? Andy Wright , vice president for veterinary products said Yes. While Ted Jacobs, vice president for Human Clinical Trials at Biopure argued that the early release of Oxyglobin would jeopardize their ability to bring Hemopure at higher price. Carl Rausch, president and CEO of Biopure was thinking of leveraging the opportunity offered by Oxyglobin without jeopardizing the potential of Hemopure. In my opinion, I would like to advise the company ready to launch the sale of Oxyglobin immediately upon the final approval of U.S government.

Who is Biopure? Established in 1984,Biopure was a biopharmaceutical company that specialized in oxygen therapeutics for both human and veterinary use. By 1998, it entered the field of “blood substitutes”. Before that, no blood substitute had been approved for use worldwide. During the time without blood substitutes,donated blood was used for blood transfusion in a surgery or under other emergency situations by doctors. Blood substitutes under Biopure had two products. One was Oxyglobin, which was used for animals. The other is Hemopure, which was used for human being. Both of the products were sourced from bovine, blood of cattle. Oxyglobin and Hemopure were all in the waiting line of FDI’s approval. But Oxyglobin was ready to launch, Hemopure was still two years away from final approval.

Oxyglobin’s market strength Before we made suggestions to Biopure’s management which products should be marketed first, let’s take a look at whether the two products would be the potential winners once thrown into the market with their own features. Oxyglobin was a kind of blood substitute used for animals. The traditional source of blood transfusion for animals was from donor animals. Now I’ll analyze the strengths of Oxyglobin in the following aspects:
→Competitors:By now, Biopure was the only company who had researched and developed in the field of blood substitute for animals and had a product named Oxyglobin under approval. Even if another company began the development of animal blood substitute immediately, it would take them 2-5years to bring a product to market.
→Price: For animal blood bank:a typical primary care practice charged a pet owner $80-$120 per unit and a typical emergency care practice charged a pet owner $130-$170 per unit. Though the price of Oxyglobin has not been decided yet, the anticipated price would be range from $80-$200, not driving far away from the price of donated blood. And some surveys reveals, 90%pet owners were willing to pay higher for alternatives to treat their pets. (see Table A) We’ll talk about this in more detail in later sections.
→Effectiveness: Only one-tenth of practices always typed the blood of both the donor and recipient animals. Though incompatible blood types were not as severely for dogs as they are for humans, this lack of blood typing still prolonged the recovery of a patient animal. But with Oxyglobin, there’s no need to type the blood.
→Productivity: Historically, the supply was still constrained to the lack of adequate blood. 1n 1995, about 30% dogs would have benefited from transfusion of blood, but only 2.5% had received.Let’s compare the blood transfusion demand and Oxyglobin supply below:

|Type |Unites/ |Number of practice |Total demands(units) |
| |practice | | |
| | |
|Oxyglobin supply |