Replies to post #65403 on Biotech Values

[iwfal]

MS drugs in trial - Thanks for the list. But missing Atacicept (which is in ph ii)

[tinkershaw]

Dew suggested that I repost my response from the IV board here as it may draw some higher quality responses. So that is what I am doing:

"Dew,

Of the drugs you have listed, I am not familiar with all of them. However, of these, the ones that I am aware of that may have efficacy similar or perhaps better than tysabri would be fingolimod and campath.

Campath is easily the most dangerous of the drugs. It arguably is more effective than even tysabri, but between campath and tysabri, I don't think the side effect trade offs are necessarily worth considering campath first unless tysabri did not work.

Fingolimod is interesting. I think the efficacy will probably be similar, but probably a bit less. However, its oral delivery system makes it very compelling as its efficacy for most patients shows the potential to be similar to tysabri. Between the two, one has reasons that they may choose fingolimod first. However, there are also safety concerns with findolimod as well. Will more patients die from opportunistic infections? What is the opportunistic infection rate? We just know of the 2 recent fatalities. It still remains to be seen how fingolimod will stack up in the end.

Some of the drugs, like oral copaxone do not have me too concerned. Certainly oral copaxone would significantly ease the use of the drug and may hurt the market for generic copaxone which I know you are very interested in. However, efficacy wise, oral copaxone, injectable copaxone, the efficacy is no different. If you want efficacy you go to tysabri, you go to campath, and it looks like you can go to fingolimod. From what I can see the CRABS have effect, they reduce outbreaks, they can mask symptoms for awhile, but all in all, they do not compare to a tysabri or a campath. As such, if you want copaxone, go with the oral delivery system. But I don't believe it will materially impact tysabri's business no matter how many times Teva calls tysabri "drug induced AIDS". The other drugs I am not familiar with, but Biogen's drug we should probably take seriously as Biogen does want to own this space and they would not have to share BG-12 with Elan.

Tinker"