Replies to post #103989 on Biotech Values

[dewophile]

even if your bullish market-share projection for Lambda should come to pass, one can question how much business there will be for interferon drugs in particular and HCV drugs in general once Telaprevir and Boceprevir cure the bulk of the already-diagnosed patient pool

that is exactly why i think the buyout was not a bad deal for zgen as some others believe (although i do think lambda would take 100% of whatever inf market there was should it make it to market)

[ciotera]

don't forget that only peg-ifn eligible patients can try telaprevir or boceprevir + soc combo.
the rest will have to wait for something more tolerable, like lambda or av-only combo.

[iwfal]

Moreover, even if your bullish market-share projection for Lambda should come to pass, one can question how much business there will be for interferon drugs in particular and HCV drugs in general once Telaprevir and Boceprevir cure the bulk of the already-diagnosed patient pool.

Agreed that this is an issue but OTOH:

a) My numbers do not count on much of this bolus of patients - mostly just a steady state of newly discovered cases.

b) Will still get some of this bolus since I would suggest that about 50% percent of SOC treatment failures are treatment failures due to side effects. Maybe 1/2 of them will be willing to try ifn again if it has a better chance of success (as it would with T or B added). But that still leaves a large bolus of patients for either all-DAA or substantially better ifn. Add to this those patients with a genotype that is known to be resistant to T+SOC.. .

c) The patients sitting on the sidelines are those whose liver still looks good and want a combo of both lower side effects and higher treatment success. I.e. some will hop onto Ifn-alpha plus T or B. But a hunk will wait because they can (or believe that they can).

I.e. I agree that ifn is never going to hit the peak sales thrown around for T or B (e.g. $6B). But neither is it needed to justify a market cap for Zymo above $1B.