Biotech Values

[rkrw]

<<I agree that the median may not be the best indicator of the clinical benefit, but you are assuming that the Tarceva arm had significant “outliers” to a greater extent than the placebo arm.>>

We do not know that yet!>>

Come on Dew, you can do better than that!

<<It is quite possible that the respective survival curves for the Tarceva and placebo arms separate nicely at the 50% level (which is used to calculate the median survival) and then quickly collapse on one another. E.g., at the point on the curves where, say, 10% of patients are still alive, the Tarceva curve may have no little or no incremental duration relative to the placebo curve.>>

This is being overly cautious and I assume you don't really believe this. If the iressa nejm article tells us anything it's that there are certain egf mutations that lead to incredible clinical responses. Full data release will indeed be telling.

I'd also note the tarceva endpoint was met in a nonselected patient population. So there must be benefit over and above the 10% or so with the particular egf mutations and over and above what's seen with iressa.

RE DNA. I wish I had some bio's that had dna's problem: inlicensing blockbusters rather than homegrown!
DNA has the opportunity to do some powerful things with their currency. I can't recall them ever doing m&a. Biotech never gets boring.