Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

EYET CC at SG Cowen contains more bad news for Lucentis:

At the SG Cowen conference today, EYET’s CEO David Guyer repeated what we already knew (#msg-2541474, http://tinyurl.com/3gl55): that Genentech’s Lucentis is having some fairly serious problems with patients in the phase-3 trials.

Two weeks ago, Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito of the University of Miami stated at the Bio-CEO conference that as many as 10% of Lucentis patients are experiencing severe inflammation after each Lucentis injection. EYET’s Guyer did not give a frequency for this Lucentis problem, but he said that in many cases the Lucentis-induced inflammation is so bad that doctors cannot see the retina.

Guyer stated the Macugen has never caused such severe inflammation in even a single patient. He attributes the difference between Macugen and Lucentis to the much higher level of immunogenicity of Lucentis (an antibody fragment) compared to Macugen (an aptamer).

The rest of the EYET presentation was basically old stuff. It is definitely worth a listen for anyone unfamiliar with the EYET/Macugen “story.”