Replies to post #97134 on Biotech Values

[mcbio]

Re: ACHN

The initiation of the POC trial of 320 also raises risks because of competition and perhaps I am being unduly bearish about how 320 would affect ACHN's chances of landing a partnership.

Certainly IDX320 represents more competition in the HCV PI marketplace. But, I don't see a prospective big pharma partner necessarily balking on ACH-1625 with IDX320 on the horizon insofar as ACH-1625 has already established PoC whereas IDX320 has yet to do so. Also, I think the only real big advantage of a 3rd gen PI like IDX320 over a 2nd gen PI like ACH-1625 pertains to pan-genotypic activity. But, ACH-1625 is active against HCV genotype 1, which is greater than 70% of HCV patients.

I see a little bit of ARYX in ACHN where a lot rides on landing a partnership even though the comparison may not be fair considering ACHN at least has the money to run a clinical trial.

Ouch Turtle. Not exactly the comparison I wanted to see given that ARYX is one of my worst biotech investments ever so far. lol (My only saving grace to some extent is that my initial ARYX purchase was about half the size of my normal positions.)

IDIX is perhaps the safest small cap HCV play right now.

I think that as well, but of course that's reflected in the market caps to a large degree with IDIX trading at over a $360M market cap versus ~$100M for ACHN. (Not that I think IDIX is overvalued as I have a very nice gain in the stock and it is much more heavily weighted in my biofolio now given the run-up, but I am not selling yet.)