Replies to post #215081 on Biotech Values

[ghmm]

IPF:

I have not seen the paper to comment fully still I think one should NOT read too much into this
1-We already know IPF is a progressive disease and neither approved agent halts progression.
2-Its a rather small study in a HIGHLY variable disease
3-Granted its biased but Roche actually has some much larger datasets on treatment benefit continuing out past 1 year.

With those caveats its interesting ITMN's second study (ASCEND) was designed to be 48 weeks because one of the trials in the first studies (CAPACITY) was significance till that point (and ended up failing badly while the other was stat significant).

I am long FGEN and other companies with IPF interest and was an ITMN long for disclosure.

[Whalatane]

FGEN ...any thoughts ( anyone ) on the decline since the CC. ?
Kiwi

[ghmm]

Esbriet Long Term treatment / IPF

Just to follow up
Here is one study Roche did on long term treatment (I believe there may be more data but didn't look much for it)
https://www.roche.com/media/store/releases/med-cor-2015-09-29.htm

I think for current IPF investors it is more meaningful to focus on whats going on now.
Roche is testing Pirfenidone with their former IL-13 drug (they kept ILD rights)
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01872689

Also while its general thought the two drugs (Ofev and Esbriet) aren't well tolerated (especially together) both companies have run studies combining them. If developing a new IPF treatment you still wouldn't want to be much worse than the combined drugs. I wouldn't want the argument that yes our efficacy is not quite as good but we're much better tolerated (that sounds like a second line argument to me). Here are a couple links on those studies
http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/rccm.201706-1301OC
http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/ajrccm-conference.2017.195.1_MeetingAbstracts.A5398