Replies to post #62015 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

>VRTX SGP – If the boceprevir svr rate ends up 20 points higher than the control arm, then i think it suggests that the sgp peg is less effective than the roche peg…<

I respectfully disagree—if this were to occur, the most likely explanation, IMO, would be differences in the patient populations between the Boceprevir study and the Telaprevir PROVE-1/2 studies.

If the differences between Pegasys and Peg-Intron were as large as you suggest, Peg-Intron would already have been long gone from commercial use. Yet Peg-Intron continues to garner a 35% share of the worldwide ifn-alpha market and it sold at a $900M annualized rate during 1Q08.

>…and that would not be good for boceprevir, since sgp will never use the roche peg in a boceprevir trial.<

Again, I disagree. In phase-3, SGP may opt to include Pegasys in some form. I don’t see SGP cutting off its nose to spite its face by insisting on all Peg-Intron, all the time. Regards, Dew

[DewDiligence]

1Q08 Worldwide Ifn-Alpha Sales

 
            Sales   Market 
             ($M)   Share 
 Pegasys      357    56% 
 Peg-Intron   225    35% 
 Intron-A      55     9% 
 === 
 Total        637   100%

Source: Roche, Schering-Plough

[DewDiligence]

>If the boceprevir svr rate ends up 20 points higher than the control arm, then i think it suggests that the sgp peg is less effective than the roche peg, and that would not be good for boceprevir, since sgp will never use the roche peg in a boceprevir trial. Its hard to see boceprevir ending up the winner.<

Measuring the delta SVR of the active arm relative to the control arm removes any bias stemming from possible differences between Pegintron and Pegasys. Your argument suggests a lack of objectivity about the competition.

p.s. I stand by the comments in #msg-28865149, which you may want to revisit.