Replies to post #86227 on Biotech Values

[iwfal]

ZGEN -

Telapravir is setting the bar higher with 12+12 i.e. ifn market falls in half. Adding additional orals will aim for shorter courses of treatment.

So, ifn's double their price. What are the orals thinking of charging? My guess is ifn-L, if it proves still to be necessary, will easily charge more per patient than any individual oral because it is a fairly good bet that it is significantly superior to other ifns in both efficacy and SAE - i.e. it won't have the competition problem that the direct anti-virals do.

Everyone is gunning for all oral, no ifn.

And that is it's downside - competition. (Note also that I love group think. Really, not a joke. It is where the money is - e.g. I would very much have liked to have found a way to make money on the Crestor CRP trial since the odds were much much better than the group think among the specialists said)

Bristol bet is that it will never happen.

No, as my math showed, Bristol need only have estimated a 30% chance it would never happen.

[tony111]

It has recently been shown that patients with a SNP at IL-28B gene tend to achieve SVR undergoing SOC. In fact, 86% of Caucasians achieved SVR with the SNP compared to 36% of patients without it. Although the MOA of the SNP has not been elucidated, preliminary work has suggested that the SNP causes higher expression of IL-28B. If you have listened to the ZGEN's recent CC, CEO said that interferon lambda was so well tolerated that relapse patients thought they were on placebo. I certainly think that lambda will be overwhelming better than alpha (that is assume interferon will not be obsolete).