Biotech Values

[dewophile]

but investing is all about predicting based upon less than perfect information. for anyone who did any modicum of digging the EASL abstracts showing good SVRs with MRK's drugs for 12 weeks(albeit in a somewhat smaller population) has been available for a while. what I learned today is that their 8 week data can't compete - which is very good for GILD and slightly positive for ABBV. The fact they did well without ribavirin is a negative for GILD and somewhat negative for ABBV. The fact MRK did worse on an ITT basis WITH ribavirin may just be an outlier or it could indicate some tolerability issues with ribavirin - which could translate to lower success in difficult to treat populations like cirrhotics (and maybe tx experienced too) who are more likely to gain a benefit from ribavirin. if even one of the failures in genotype 1b is virologic then it's likely MRK won't have the near 100% SVR that ABBV had in this subgroup. if MRK makes it through phase 3 these are my way too early thoughts on possible outcomes and where they may end up being more or less competitive based on these very early data