Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

ITMN/Roche—My understanding, based on prior discussions with Dew, is that Roche had an HCV exclusivity deal with ITMN and therefore could not just walk away from the partnership with ITMN if Roche ever wanted to license an outside HCV compound. I.e., Roche had to pay ITMN to terminate its HCV exclusivity deal with ITMN in order to have the freedom to license an HCV compound from another company.

That’s correct for protease inhibitors, specifically—i.e. Roche could have licensed an HCV drug from another class without any obligation to ITMN.

That Roche was (IMO) willing to pay $175M to get out of the ITMN agreement tells me that Roche considers a protease inhibitor an obligate component of an all-oral HCV cocktail. Everyone in the HCV arena agrees except VRUS, who has been touting to investors the notion of a dual-nuke regimen without a third agent (#msg-54225312).