Replies to post #117495 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

I haven’t had time to fully digest the EASL PR’s yet, so I will post them with minimal annotations. Anyone who wishes to comment on EASL data from any of the presenting companies should feel free to chime in. Eventually, I will update the “HCV: Most Likely to Succeed” compilation.

[oc631]

I'm still in the latter camp because I'm not yet convinced that an NS5A and/or nuke will be enough to remove interferon and possibly ribavirin from the equation. (It may still take a third class, such as a PI.)

Data from the dual nuke combo suggests to me that interferon's days are numbered. When you get such speed and efficacy in a dual nuke combo why experiment with other classes which will only reduce the resistance profile of a two drug combination. What VRUS has developed is the new SOC in HCV treatment and in the future three drug combos will be used for nulls in the second line setting IMO.

One more point which pertains to the valuation of the company. There are other developers of nucleotide analogs out there but no other company had the insight of combining a purine and pyrimidine nuke thereby giving VRUS tremendous leverage going forward. IMO all the other developers in this class have half a backbone.

[DewDiligence]

EASL Post-Mortem

Biotech analyst, Mark Schoenebaum, surveyed approximately 100 buy-side analysts, asking them which company was the biggest winner at EASL. The responses were as follows:

VRUS 68%
BMY 9%
INHX 6%
ACHN 4%
GILD 4%
Medivir 4%
VRTX 4%
*JNJ 2%
All other: 0%

The definition of being a winner was not explicitly stated, but the respondents presumably thought it was a measure of how much a given company exceeded expectations. (That’s why VRTX, for instance, had a low vote in the survey—the most consequential data VRTX released at EASL were the IL28B stratifications in #msg-61716397—while INHX had a relatively high vote despite releasing also-ran data.)

Sorry, I do not have a link for this survey info.

*JNJ is partnered with both VRTX and Medivir.