Replies to post #29626 on Biotech Values

[Biowatch]

Re; Competitive cancer drug landscape

#msg-11398356 and the following story have the same theme. "Me-too" competition is common in the small molecule drug market. Now it is spreading to biotech companies.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/06/04/pfizer-genentech-wye-cx_pk_rl_0604drug.html

>>Cancer Drug Market Gets Crowded
By Robert Langreth and Peter Kang 06.04.06, 7:00 AM ET

Atlanta -

It used to be that patients with advanced cancer had relatively few choices. Now there are so many new targeted therapies out there or in development, it is starting to get confusing—even for the doctors.

There are now five relatively new colon cancer drugs on the market, including the targeted therapies. A third targeted colon cancer drug from Amgen, Panitumumab, is under FDA review, with approval widely expected by Wall Street analysts.

In kidney cancer, there are two new drugs from Pfizer and Bayer; both companies are hoping to quickly expand the drugs’ usage. Wyeth presented positive results from a third drug, Temsiroliumus, this weekend at a meeting of oncologists in Atlanta.

Genentech's Avastin has also shown evidence of activity in kidney cancer. “For years and years, drug after drug showed no activity in renal cancer. Now all of a sudden, there are several that do,” says Robert Motzer of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Meanwhile, GlaxoSmithKline is hoping its experimental breast cancer treatment Tykerb will expand on the success of Genentech’s Herceptin. The British drug giant’s positive data announced on Saturday will form the basis of its approval application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, expected to be filed later this year. (Also see: "Big Pharma’s Revenge").

None of the drugs are cures--typically they extend survival or delay progression for a few months. The difficulty for doctors will be in sorting out which drugs to use in which order, which is rapidly getting more complicated.

“The playing field is going to become a lot more crowded, and the challenge will be how to use the drugs to the best advantage of the patients,” says Gary Hudes, of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and lead researcher for Wyeth’s new kidney cancer study.

The Wyeth study is notable because it displayed a clear survival advantage of about three months in very sick kidney cancer patients with the worst prognosis. But Pfizer’s Sutent delayed progression of the disease by almost six months in a broader group of 750 patients.

This big study should make Pfizer’s Sutent a clear choice for initial treatment of advanced metastatic kidney cancer, says Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center oncologist Robert Motzer, who led the big Sutent study. He says most of his patients will now get Sutent first. “It is the most complete, most definitive study,” he says.

But Wyeth contends its drug should be the clear favorite.

“It is the first compound to show significant improvement in overall survival in kidney cancer,” says Lee Allen, a Wyeth vice president. “It is positioned to become the first-line therapy standard for renal cell cancer patients.”

Allen says the company plans to file for approval of Temsirolimus in the fourth quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, in colon cancer, Amgen awaits approval of Panitumumab, which will compete with Erbitux from Bristol-Myers Squibb. One study presented at the conference, however, unexpectedly showed that patient responses to the Amgen drug was not at all correlated with tumor levels of epidermal growth factor receptor, the intended target.

The results showed that scientists still know little about how targeted drugs really work.

“It’s a holy grail to figure out who will benefit from any particular treatment,” says Randolph Hecht, a UCLA researcher who did the study. “We still don’t know how to target targeted therapies.”

But as more promising cancer drugs do emerge, it appears that the next big step for oncologists and drugmakers will be to test drugs in combination. For doctors at ASCO, the question is which drugs should be used in which combinations and at what time. <<

[walldiver]

Re too many cancer companies in a crowded space...

Hmmm...so if you can find one which would have little competition in a large indication...say prostate cancer for example... ;-)

[AlohaDan]

I agree. Some money is on the table for 6-6-6 on ACUS.

Acusphere Inc. Conference Call
Scheduled to start Tue, Jun 6, 2006, 7:00 am Eastern

[AlpineBV_Miller]

We've been making this same point since early 2004. It's essentially the concept of the death of a blockbuster drug as therapies become more targeted. Blockbuster cancer drugs will largely disappear, replaced by blockbuster platforms. Those companies who can rapidly discover, advance, and market closely-related "toolboxes" of compounds will be enormous winners.

Setting aside for a moment how investors will react to that sort of change in expectations, we actually think it will be really good for small biotech companies. Such platforms should be easy to market and, if the FDA gets busy on the Critical Path and Biomarkers initiatives, relatively less onerous to get approved. If they can avoid the temptation to try and run a targeted therapy in trials of untargeted patients, drug development should even be faster and less costly.