Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

The Bio-CEO ophthalmology webcast including GENR is now available on replay. It runs about 85 minutes and is well worth hearing:

http://www.firstcallevents.com/service/ajwz400193770gf12.html

Some highlights:

1. Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito of the University of Miami School of Medicine was the most interesting speaker. Dr. Puliafito confirmed that DNA’s Lucentis is having “horrible problems” enrolling patients (#msg-2134458) and, even more alarming, approximately 10% of injected patients experience an inflammatory response to the VEGF antibody fragment! Despite all this, Dr. Puliafito thinks Lucentis will be a strong contender and will almost certainly surpass Macugen in efficacy.

Dr. Puliafito is somewhat skeptical about the prospects of Alcon’s Retaane in treating wet AMD per se. He thinks Retaane’s greatest benefit may be in prophylactic treatment of the “other” eye in patients who already have wet AMD in one eye. (This indication for Retaane is undergoing a long clinical trial with results expected in about 2009.)

Dr. Puliafito also stated that Visudyne up-regulates VEGF, which is counterproductive in treating AMD for obvious reasons. In his opinion, this is the main reason that Visudyne is often administered with the steroid drug, Triamcinilone, which Puliafito describes as a “poor man’s” VEGF inhibitor.

Dr. Puliafito thinks Visudyne will be out of the AMD picture entirely within five years. (Not surprisingly, QLTI disagrees.)

2. The panel moderator, Sapna Srivastava of Think Equity Partners, believes the addressable market for wet AMD is $3B annually excluding any amount for retreating patients, and the total market including retreatments is about twice that amount. These figures are essentially the same as my own projections posted on this board: #msg-1832330 .

3. Acuity Pharma’s presentation about their siRNA drug was outstanding. Although still in preclinical testing, this drug seems to have a lot of upside, and plans are underway to begin phase-1 trials late this year.

4. Last but not least, Dr. Levitt did a nice job emphasizing the potential of Squalamine to treat the “other” eye prophylactically in patients who already have wet AMD in one eye. (This is the market for which Dr. Puliafito believes Retaane is well-suited, as mentioned above). If Squalamine could attain a high penetration into this market segment, there could be very substantially sales, apart from whatever sales Squalamine will garner as a primary treatment.