Biotech Values

[NP1986]

I thought this was a relatively small patient population. How large is this patient population and what are your projections for ponatinib in this patient population? It would have to be pretty lofty projections for this one population to justify the current ~$1.5B market cap.

Yes, I should backtrack a little. I'm looking at my ARIA spreadsheet, and I included highly refractory patients as well (i.e. failures on BOTH 2nd gen TKIs).

I'm assuming an incidence of 300 patients with T315I mutations who would be treated with ponatinib and 150 patients who would fail both Sprycel and Tasigna in the United States alone; in my estimation, this could eventually represent ~1500 patients who would be on ponatinib in a given year. Of course, this can vary depending on what you assume treatment discontinuation and survival rates would be and on new competitors.

Assuming that ponatinib is priced at $60,000 per annum, that is approximately $90M in potential annual revenue based on just T315I patients and patients failing both Sprycel and Tasigna. It's not spectacular, but still a significant amount of revenue - again, assuming US sales only. IMO, ponatinib will eventually be partnered in Europe - so if you throw in royalties of $15M, this still makes ARIA pretty good value - IMHO, of course.