"Any drug that's effective is going to have a place in the armamentarium"
Hey..I said the same thing! strange we both used the word armamentaium (not that it's that unique in this context, but still..Dr. Brown - are you reading ihub?;)
msg# 37852 "...at the end of the day nm-283 has activity in hep C coupled with a good side effect profile. somehow, someway, this agent should find its way into the therapeutic armamentarium"...
Today’s Barron’s had a one-page report on the HCV market, and contained few new insights for PPHM investors. Here are the sub-headlines:
“Hep C, a devastating liver disease, may afflict 170 million people worldwide. No effective cure exists, but drug makers are racing to develop one. Wall Street is betting on Vertex, but it’s not likely to be the sole winner.”
“Even if Vertex is first to market with a promising new Hepatitis C treatment, shares of competing drug makers look like a better value”
The piece went on to list nine companies active in this space, with no mention of PPHM.
The article’s focus is on whether or not Vertex is fairly valued or over-valued, and it pits the “wisdom of the crowd” on Wall Street (a crowd that is making a $5 billion real-money bet on Vertex) against the opinion of one medical researcher (who believes patients will be treated with a cocktail of drugs, and who also happens to be a consultant to competitor Idenix!)
Barron’s does note that by 2008 Vertex will have tested its drug on 1,000 patients and will be submitting the results to the FDA for approval. Barron’s proposes that the valuation argument comes down to whether or not there will be a first-mover advantage.
In that debate, Barron’s fails to recognize a few key points:
* If Vertex is first to market, and if it has exclusive access to the market for a few years, each patient it successfully treats will not be a potential source of revenue for a later market entrant. In other words, an SVR is an SVR, and the first-mover shrinks the size of the market that is available to the later entrants. * Once Vertex is in the market with an approved drug, it may become more difficult for competitors to recruit the 1,000 patients necessary to win approval for their drugs. * For later entrants to win meaningful market share away from a first entrant such as Vertex, they would have to prove they have a decisive advantage in terms of safety, side effects, efficacy, convenience, cost, or marketing muscle. Yet Barron’s fails to identify which drug or company might have that advantage, relative to Vertex.
But in the article’s last sentence, Barron’s does redeem itself by quoting one researcher who, when talking about company valuations, says "I think all the boats are going to float higher."
The data cited in the article surely supports that statement: 170 million people may be infected with the disease, worldwide; drug pricing may be as high as $25,000 per treatment; every 40,000 patients may generate $1 billion of revenue, with much of that falling to the bottom line.
Or, as Vertex’s CEO is quoted as saying: "It is accurate to say the market opportunity here is almost unprecedented."
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