Biotech Values

[mcbio]

Re: HCV PI competition

Your "quickly supplanted" part. Your doomsday scenario is years away. How many patients will be treated between now and then? How much cash flow to the first movers? What will the hcv market level out at once the first waves of patients get treated? What will the hcv treatment paradigm look like 7 years from now when an ACHN, assuming everything goes perfectly well gets approved?

Fair enough on the "quickly supplanted" part. Obviously the 2nd gen and 3rd gen PIs are several years behind and there will be significant cash to be made during those years for the front-runners. However, I think a timeline of 7 years until approval for ACHN's ACH-1625, assuming all goes well, is a bit too long. Note, too, that there are a few other 2nd gen PIs a year or two ahead of ACH-1625. (Either way, I don't expect to stick around in ACHN for that long as the longer-term is so difficult to predict.) I still think that so much of the anticipated success of telaprevir is already priced into the stock, given an ~$8B market cap, and the gap between the market caps of the first gen HCV PI players and those of the 2nd and 3rd gen players like ACHN and IDIX is much too wide.