Halozyme Therapeutics Inc (HALO)

[maumar]

This is one of the reasons SC Herceptin sales have not been growing. From the Q4 Roche earnings call:

"If you look forward and what else is coming in HER2 positive space. We announced the positive study of the Federica study, which is looking at the fixed dose combination of Herceptin plus Perjeta in a subcutaneous form. And we haven't had a tremendous uptake of SubQ Herceptin in part because the desired regimen, the preferred regimen for Herceptin now is with Perjeta, whether it's in metastatic disease or in early breast cancer.

And so if you have a SubQ and an IV, that's not that helpful, if you're already going to have to give someone an IV. But with this, you have the opportunity, once someone's come, patients come through the chemo part of the therapy for the adjuvant continuation, they can come in and instead of having infusions lasting from, 2.5 to 7.5 hours, we're talking 20 to 40 minutes. So we think that's a pretty big advantage for patients and it could be an important factor for converting patients to the fixed dose combination. And so we're excited about it. We expect to launch in the U.S. in 2020."

It's odd but it looks like SC Perjeta/Herceptin may launch before SC Darzalex. Roche must've just filed, so I would think they will be able to launch towards the end of 2020.

Writing calls may be the smart strategy here unless of course there is a buyout.