SurModics Inc (SRDX)

[DewDiligence]

Re: Avastin

>one thing I still don't get… as Dew reports Avastin seems to be the choice drug for back of eye disease… but still you need frequent shots… why wouldn't they at least experiment with Avastin on the eye tack?<

It’s a cost/benefit tradeoff.

Standalone Avastin is far from ideal for treating retinal diseases, but it costs virtually nothing to administer. A compounding pharmacist can aliquot a single 400mg vial intended for treating cancer into a large number of ophthalmic-sized doses. Genentech initially tried to prevent this by refusing to ship to compounding pharmacists, but they had to back down in the face of a blistering backlash from the AAO.

Consequently, any product—whether drug or device—that has a realistic chance to garner a premium price in the AMD/DME market will not merely have to be clinically superior to Avastin—it will have to blow it away. I don’t think the InnoRx platform has the potential to do this and MRK doesn’t either, evidently. Regards, Dew