Biophud, I posted this on yahoo today.
The best numbers that I have available show me that in the states, Erbitux is being used in approximately 3200 MCRC patients and 3000 HN patients on an monthly basis. These numbers add up to approximately $62 mil in monthly sales or $186 mil per quarter.
As of today, Erbitux is in the process of losing 35% of its MCRC patient population because of KRAS testing. That translates into a loss of 1200 patients on an monthly basis or $36 million dollars a quarter. There's no question that we'll see a sales decline in the current quarter because of this change.
Now the 1st key of this years ASCO meeting would be for Imclone to establish that Cetuximab "should" be used in the Wild-Type kras patient period. I don't think it really matters when it's used (it looks like most of the "duration of treatments" are close to the same) as long as it's in the treatment scheme somewhere.
If Imclone can re-inforce this data, I would expect that in no time Erbitux's sales will accelerate. If you look at the macro of Mcrc, you'll see there are around 24k patients being treated at any given time and 14,500 of those would be prime candidates to use Erbitux. If Erbiitux could capture 50% of that population it's sales in MCRC would double from todays level.
AI
