Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

ZGEN/BMY—the tolerability of lambda alone would enable it to dominate the entire INF market regardless of how many alpha interferon follow-ons there are…

I don’t think it’ll happen that easily. Moreover, even if your bullish market-share projection for Lambda should come to pass, one can question how much business there will be for interferon drugs in particular and HCV drugs in general once Telaprevir and Boceprevir cure the bulk of the already-diagnosed patient pool. Between the first- and second-line settings, a bolus of about 600K diagnosed patients in the US and a similar number in the big-5 EU countries will likely try Telaprevir or Boceprevir within a year or two of their respective launches in 2011 or 2012.

The number of new HCV diagnoses per year is very much smaller, about 6-7K in the US and a similar number in the big-5 EU countries. Increased HCV testing will likely increase this number to some degree, but the bulk of HCV infections occurred before the blood supply started being screened for HCV in the late 1980’s, and hence new diagnoses are unlikely to increase steeply.