Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Re: ARIA’s EPIC post-mortem

In today’s PR, the safety comparison of Iclusig relative to Gleevec was as bad as the efficacy comparison (which you posted) was good (http://investor.ariad.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=118422&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1936051&highlight ):

• More ponatinib patients experienced vascular occlusive events (8%, n=12) vs. imatinib patients (2%, n=3).

• There was a higher incidence of treatment-emergent grade 3 or 4 AEs for ponatinib vs. imatinib. The most common AEs were lipase increase (14%, n=22) vs. (2%, n=3), thrombocytopenia (12%, n=19) vs. (7%, n=10), rash (7%, n=10) vs. (1%, n=2).

• There also was a higher incidence of serious AEs for ponatinib vs. imatinib. The most common SAE was pancreatitis (3%, n=5) on the ponatinib arm; none reported with imatinib.

Of course, the high starting dose was partly to blame for these safety results.

CC Monday at 8:30am ET.