Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

>VRTX SGP – If the boceprevir svr rate ends up 20 points higher than the control arm, then i think it suggests that the sgp peg is less effective than the roche peg…<

I respectfully disagree—if this were to occur, the most likely explanation, IMO, would be differences in the patient populations between the Boceprevir study and the Telaprevir PROVE-1/2 studies.

If the differences between Pegasys and Peg-Intron were as large as you suggest, Peg-Intron would already have been long gone from commercial use. Yet Peg-Intron continues to garner a 35% share of the worldwide ifn-alpha market and it sold at a $900M annualized rate during 1Q08.

>…and that would not be good for boceprevir, since sgp will never use the roche peg in a boceprevir trial.<

Again, I disagree. In phase-3, SGP may opt to include Pegasys in some form. I don’t see SGP cutting off its nose to spite its face by insisting on all Peg-Intron, all the time. Regards, Dew