Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc fka ARIA

[ariadndndough]

from Biomaven from biotech value board very nice post on alk drug

thanks biomaven once agian for your insight


biomaven0 Share Saturday, May 07, 2011 11:54:43 AM
Re: bladerunner1717 post# 119537 Post # of 119550

>>why you think this will prove to be the real driver of the stock?

Just like the CML drugs have essentially created their own market, so the ALK drugs will likely do the same.

Here's a quote about CML from a paper whose authors include Cortes and Kantarjian (I think the numbers they cite are too high, but it gets the point across):


Quote:
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Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a rare disease. Although its incidence is low, its prevalence is increasing. In the United States, there are approximately 4,500 new cases of CML per year.[1] The annual incidence of CML is 1.6 cases per 100,000 adults.[1] The median age at diagnosis is 55 years. With an estimated survival rate of 90% at 5 years and an annual mortality rate of 2%, the prevalence of CML in 20 years may become 200,000 to 300,000 cases in the United States.
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http://www.cancernetwork.com/display/article/10165/61348

But the key is that Ariad is much earlier to this ALK market than it is to CML, and it's potentially a significantly bigger market. Think of the Pfizer drug as Gleevec, and the Ariad drug as a better version that is coming maybe 2 years after launch instead of something like 5 years for the CML 2nd-generation drugs. The Pfizer drug is not technically a great one (if I recall correctly it was actually not originally intended as an ALK drug), and so mutations are inevitable. Preclinically the ARIAD drug is much better, and this is a space (like CML) where preclinical results are highly predictive of clinical results.

If you want to do more research, check out the Ariad poster on their drug from about a year ago, and the NEJM article on the Pfizer drug.

Peter