VRTX SGP ITMN – More than a modicum of anti-Boceprevir propaganda is emanating from the VRTX message board on Yahoo. The posters there are accusing SGP of fraudulently “hiding” 16 patients in the phase-2 SPRINT trial in order to frost the numbers and make Boceprevir look better in comparison to Telaprevir. These posters even managed to persuade a brain-dead anti-SGP blogger to carry the story line. (The blogger says that SGP will lose its entire HCV franchise if Telaprevir succeeds. Huh?)
The point the Yahoo posters don’t seem to get is that the only consequential arms of the SPRINT trial are the 48-week control arm and the two 28-week treatment arms that tested Boceprevir + peg-ifn + ribavirin. (There were two 28-week arms in the trial because one 28-week arm had a 4-week lead-in period with SoC only, and one 28-week arm did not have a 4-week lead-in period.)
The two SPRINT trial arms that tested a 48-week regimen of Boceprevir + peg-ifn + ribavirin are irrelevant from a commercial standpoint because: i) Boceprevir showed more than adequate efficacy in the 28-week arms; and ii) the Telaprevir data from the PROVE-1/2 studies make a 48-week treatment regimen for Boceprevir commercially untenable.
Yet the VRTX Yahoo posters allege that there are “missing” patients in one of the SPRINT 48-week treatment arms. Never mind that these arms are immaterial—these posters sense an opening to belittle the Boceprevir data and thereby make themselves feel better about being long VRTX. (What’s ironic is that it’s the superb 24-week data produced by VRTX in the PROVE-1/2 studies that has rendered the 48-week treatment arms of SPRINT immaterial.)
p.s. Curiously, when I suggested to one of these VRTX bulls that he call SGP to obtain clarification on the “missing” patients, he replied that SGP can’t be trusted to speak the truth. Translation: the poster in question does not want clarification because he’d rather perpetuate the canard that SGP is evil and VRTX is good and great.
“The efficient-market hypothesis may be
the foremost piece of B.S. ever promulgated
in any area of human knowledge!”
“The efficient-market hypothesis may be
the foremost piece of B.S. ever promulgated
in any area of human knowledge!”
AI
