Biotech Values

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Momenta taps into emerging market of biosimilars
Feb 26, 2013 Boston Business Journal

If you can imagine working in an industry where it costs tens of millions of dollars to bring a product to market, yet it’s unclear whether or how long you can make money on any given product, that’s a pretty good idea of what it’s like to work in the biosimilars market today.

Yet it’s exactly that uncertainty that has Craig Wheeler, CEO of Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: MNTA), seeing opportunity. Wheeler likens the emerging market of biosimilars – generic versions of complex, large-molecule biologic drugs – to the early days of the personal computer, when no one knew exactly how they would be used yet.

“It’s kind of a unique opportunity to go into it,” he said. “There’s kind of a whole industry being born.”

To be clear, Wheeler doesn’t see biosimilars as the Cambridge, Mass.-based drug company’s ultimate goal. Rather, they are the next step on the company’s path to develop its own novel drugs – a goal that likely won’t be realized until the end of this decade at the earliest.

But Momenta, through a partnership announced in December 2011 with Baxter International Inc., is one of a select few companies entering the field, which is expected to hit nearly $20 billion by 2014. Michael Waterhouse, an analyst for Morningstar, said that there are really only three or four big companies working in the space. Aside from the Baxter/Momenta deal, he pointed to Israeli-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and its partner, Swiss-based Lonza; Hospira Inc., through a partnership with South Korea-based Celltrion Inc.; and Princeton, N.J.-based Sandoz. More locally, in 2011, Weston, Mass.-based Biogen Idec (Nasdaq: BIIB) and South Korean drug company Samsung announced a $300 million joint venture to develop biosimilars.

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http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/bioflash/2013/02/momenta-taps-into-emerging-market-of.html


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Momenta’s novel drug program’s lead candidate is M402, which is in Phase 1/2 trials and intended to be tested as a treatment for pancreatic cancer. Wheeler said that Phase 2 trials could be held as soon as 2015-2016.

Does Wheeler know something positive about M402?