Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (MNTA)

[DewDiligence]

Eylea is indeed a much bigger product than Xolair, but there are downsides. As a bigger product, Eylea is likely to attract more FoB players. CHRS has acknowledged having an Eylea-FoB program, and there may be others.

Moreover, Eylea is a fusion protein (as is Orencia), which means it will be technically more difficult to attain bioequivalence to the reference product than it would with a simpler protein such as Xolair.

Technical difficulty has been MNTA’s calling card, but some projects might be too difficult even for MNTA, and we don’t want a repeat of what happened with Orencia.

All told, I’m not convinced that Eylea is a smarter choice for MNTA/MYL than Xolair would have been.