GTC Biotherapeutics (fka GTCB)

[DewDiligence]

Good post. Ease of scale-up will always be a major benefit—perhaps the main benefit—of transgenic production for most protein drugs. For any drug with a novel MoA, gauging the commercial demand when a product is not yet in human trials will forever involve huge amounts of guesswork.

Take Merrimack’s MM-093, for instance. Will it be a niche drug for third- and fourth-line RA that does $100M a year in sales… or will it be a bona fide blockbuster that sells in the billions? Who knows.

For Merrimack, it may have been a stroke of luck that AFP does not express in cell culture, leaving no realistic production choice other than GTC.