listening to Teva's Jan 7th webcast. Bill Marth was adamant about believing that generic Copaxone applicants will have to run comprehensive clinical studies. He does not believe anyone can fully characterize a polypeptide with permutations up to 10 to the 28th power.
The 10^28 figure is irrelevant. MNTA replicates branded Copaxone by reverse engineering the process that generates the permutations, not by replicating each of the permutations directly. Please see #msg-30647865, which is an entry in the MNTA ReadMeFirst.
Bill Marth knows all this, of course.
“The efficient-market hypothesis may be the foremost piece of B.S. ever promulgated in any area of human knowledge!”