UVA Blocker Finds a Place in the Sun : Marketing: Herbert Laboratories’ Photoplex is sold over the counter--and it’s doing better than the company’s new prescription medications.

In planning a new business course, Herbert Laboratories decided in the early 1980s that it would make its mark by developing prescription drugs to treat skin diseases.

Herbert, the smallest division of Irvine-based Allergan Inc., sold or swapped all of its non-prescription preparations to other firms. Among the discarded products was a sunscreen called Eclipse.

Herbert Labs President Tom Bender says the company wanted nothing more to do with “lotions and potions,” his nickname for over-the-counter drugs.

The subsidiary is still dedicated to the prescription market. But now Herbert has another over-the-counter potion on its hands--a sunscreen that so far has outpaced sales of its new prescription drugs.

The product is Photoplex, and it is the only sunscreen sold in this country to have U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to claim that it provides significant protection against ultraviolet A (UVA) radiation.

UVA was once considered a harmless part of the light spectrum, but it is now believed to play a significant role in causing skin damage. Photoplex, like other sunscreens, also combats UVB radiation, which can cause burning, premature aging and skin cancer.

The sunscreen market into which Herbert Labs has reluctantly stepped is intensely competitive, filled with a wide array of products that beckon shoppers not with the promise of a stunning tan but with a chemical shade to prevent burning and worse.

Since making its market debut in December, 1988, Photoplex has quickly become a formidable contender among sunscreens, despite little advertising and a high retail price--about $8.50 for a four-ounce bottle.

Herbert will not divulge sales figures for Photoplex. But results of a recent national survey by American Druggist, a trade magazine, show that it is the sunscreen that pharmacists at chain drugstores recommend most often. When the opinions of pharmacists at independent drugstores were also included, however, Photoplex slid to third place.

But there may be trouble ahead. This season, Photoplex is for the first time being sold away from the druggist’s counter, on shelves with other sunscreens, some of which also claim to offer “broad spectrum” protection.

Frank Killey, vice president of clinical affairs at Herbert Labs, said Photoplex was developed to be a prescription drug that dermatologists would prescribe for patients with light-activated skin diseases or who were on other medications that made them ultrasensitive to sunshine.

The product was formulated with Parsol 1789, a UVA-absorbing chemical made by the Swiss Givaudan Corp. that was already being used in some European sunscreens. Because Parsol 1789 was not on the FDA list of approved sunscreen ingredients, Herbert Labs had to take it through the agency’s lengthy new-drug-application process.

In the meantime, research laboratories produced more evidence that UVA, in concert with UVB, probably contributes to skin cancer and premature aging of the skin--the two problems that worry the general public.

Killey said the FDA approved the product for sale over the counter--rather than having it be limited it to prescription sales--because the product poses no safety problem and because there is a need for a product available to the public that has been proven to absorb UVA rays. To the company, however, Killey said, that decision was “disappointing because it meant we would have to do things differently to make this a success.”

Unlike other sunscreen and suntanning lotion makers such as Schering-Plough--which produces Coppertone--Herbert did not have a large enough sales force or advertising budget to wage a consumer marketing blitz. The company decided instead to sell Photoplex principally behind the pharmacy counter, as if it was a prescription drug.

Herbert sales people concentrated on telling dermatologists and pharmacists the scientific story of the product, in hope that they would recommend it to their patients and customers. The company also launched an aggressive public relations campaign to tell the public about the dangers of UVA exposure.

To set Photoplex apart from other sun products, the company describes it as a “therapeutic drug” and moisturizer that should be used daily year-round.

The campaign did win attention: Photoplex has been written about in numerous national women’s magazines and discussed on radio and television talk shows.

Gene Manabe, director of professional services for Fedco Pharmacies, recalled that after Photoplex was plugged in fashion magazines, “people were coming in and asking for it.”

Herbert has recognized that it could have been losing sales by keeping Photoplex behind the pharmacy counter. So this year, the company began pressing pharmacists to display Photoplex on top of their counters and urging drugstores to place it in their seasonal sunscreen displays.

“Last year, Photoplex wasn’t even in our sun-care program,” said Malcolm Proudfoot, toiletries buyer for American Drug Stores Inc., which operates the Sav-On and Osco Drugs chains. But in the first half of this year, Photoplex ranked in the top half in sales of suntanning and screening items stocked by stores in his organization.

Still, Herbert is concerned that it may have a hard time competing because the labels for other companies’ products have begun claiming that they too provide UVA protection.

Those companies’ claims have attracted the interest of the FDA as well as the ire of Herbert Labs, which argues that those companies’ claims are misleading and confusing to the consumer.

The FDA recently sent letters to several sunscreen manufacturers to advise them that they may not claim that their products protect against UVA until the agency adopts a standardized test for the effectiveness of existing over-the-counter sunscreen ingredients against UVA. FDA officials acknowledge that some ingredients in other sunscreens do absorb some UVA, but they say their degree of effectiveness is unclear.

Until it is clear, the FDA says, the only way a manufacturer can properly make UVA protection claims for its product is to take it through the same expensive and time-consuming new drug application procedure that Herbert did with Photoplex.

“Anybody else who makes claims is doing so at their own risk. They risk regulatory action,” said Jeanne Rippere, a microbiologist in charge of sunscreens for the FDA.

As the UVA controversy has heated up, Herbert officials have tried to keep their cool. “We are not getting caught up in this consumer game. We are not going to get out and shout and scream with everybody,” Bender said.

He said Photoplex so far has not generated enough sales to recoup the cost of its development. Usually that process takes about five years, he said.

“It is too early to tell when we will get a pay-back on this,” he said. “There is so much controversy in the marketplace today on the UVA claim that I think we will just have to wait and see.”