Xcovery blog - kinase industry knowledge collected and sometimes analyzed

New blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:17:00 +0000

I've taken up blogging on bio-business over at Molecular Future. I continue some of my Xcovery-orginiated analysis and themes from 5 years ago (protein kinases, drug development), and have expanded to include DNA sequencing, molecular diagnostics, economic development, PGX, and other fun topics.

I can also be contacted through the new site tim -at- molecularfuture.com

Please stop by Molecular Future.

Hello Tykerb, goodbye Blog-X!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 14:09:00 +0000

Congrats to GSK for the approval of Tykerb, another kinase targeting blockbuster, with predictions of up to $2.5B in peak sales. While some have undersold Tykerb as a late-comer to the HER-2+ market that Herceptin already dominates, this approval is important for additional reasons:

-Tykerb represents the first direct competition between a small-molecule (Tykerb) and an antibody (Herceptin). (If you're thinking Sutent & Nexavar vs. Avastin, remember that Sutent and Nexavar target the VEGF receptor, not VEGF itself.) Who wouldn't rather pop a pill versus receive a transfusion? It's not that simple, though, as transfusions increase patient compliance, which is a huge problem in the pharma world.

-Tykerb is priced about 10% less than Herceptin. We're entering a new phase of the evolution of targeted drugs, where price is a dimension of competition.

-Likewise, DNA is in the crosshairs of Tykerb, and a few other 2nd generation kinase drugs. When appraising DNA's stock, the big question is how much will DNA be able to grow it's franchises versus melt due to competitive offerings and/or competitive pricing. It is interesting to think that DNA's valuation in the medium term could be driven less by their own pipeline, and more by the pipeline of competitors.

In other news, this will be the last post to the Xcovery blog. As some of you know, the fact that there's a public blog that shares a name with our start-up kinase therapeutics company, Xcovery, was totally unintended. Xcovery has a brilliant future ahead of it, and I wouldn't want anything said on this blog to be potentially misconstrued or damaging to the company. In a world where there's only about 30 potential partners for Xcovery's products (if that), ticking off one potential partner via a blog posting (whether mine, or someone's comment) is something that we can't take a chance on.

I'll still put forward opinions and analysis on another, anonymous blog that I'll be launching this spring. Look forward to candid stock analysis, a little more attitude and personality, and perhaps a little less focus on kinases. There won't be a direct link from Xcovery to the new blog, for obvious reasons, but if you see a blog with posts that echo the ones you see here, then you'd be on target.

For your fill of insightful kinase and pharma commentary, please visit the very excellent KinasePro and In The Pipeline blogs.

In the meantime, you can reach me by mail at tim (-at-) xcovery.com

I'd like to thank the people who made ~10,000(!) visits to this space in less than 4 months, and especially those who added to the blog via comments. I started this outlet for my analysis for my own enjoyment, but I'm happy to say that I've gained tremendously from all of the interactions and learned alot from you. I hope that I've been able to do at least a little bit of the same for you.

A quick, closer look at SGXP

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 05:28:00 +0000

SGX posted their 4Q06 and FY2006 figures, so it's a good time to take a look at them.

SGX's 3 main programs target Bcr-Abl, c-Met, and JAK2.

The Bcr-Abl compound was partnered last May (NVS), which garnered a $25M upfront - though I can't find it on their financial statements - , and $9M in guaranteed research support. Last month SGXP announced a 3Q07 target for an IND filing, which probably triggers a milestone payment.

Under the NVS deal, SGX is responsible for all activities thru the completion of Phase I, and retained US co-promotion rights.

The c-Met program (SGX-523) is unpartnered, and slated for IND filing "within 12 months." Also, SGXP revealed that SGX-523 has "1000-fold more selective for MET over more than 200 human kinases."

The JAK2 program is very early - the press release makes it sound like it has been HTS'd but not much else - with an IND target in 18-20 months.

SGXP has a market cap of $80M, which is a bit better than just a month ago when I last posted about SGX ($61M), including $33M in cash on hand.

The conclusions then are still valid, and are augmented by some info that SGXP published in their year end financials. Specifically, they projected 2007 cash burn at $16-$18M, prior to any partner payments. This suggests that SGXP has about 2 years of cash left, meaning that for investors, you're betting that one or more of SGXP's programs will advance enough to replenish the cash position sometime in the next 2 years.

Using the payments from NVS ($25M upfront, $4.5M in r&d) as a guide, it would only take one deal over the next 2 years for SGX to just tread water. Two development deals in 2 years, or clinical progress by the Bcr-Abl program, or success in a new program started sometime in the next two years would drive value, and only add to the favorable risk equation.

Congrats to Sunesis....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 05:12:00 +0000

....who entered Phase I with SNS-032, a multi-CDK (2, 7, & 9) inhibitor for blood cancers.

The other prominent CDK inhibitors in development are from Cyclacel, who does not appear to have publicly identified which CDKs are are in their sights. (AZ also has a CDK4 program.)

The concern with targeting CDKs is that they are so fundamental to cell function that any therapy needs to be very, very well targeted, with above average biological knowledge to compensate for off-target effects.

Not to mention the fact that as nuclear proteins, delivery for a-CDK compounds is much more complex than say targeting RTKs.

Perhaps success by Sunesis or Cyclacel will increase interest in CDKs as targets.

"Signal transduction inhibitors are a decade away."

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 04:37:00 +0000

That line was just uttered by "House," the main character in the very excellent TV show of the same name on Fox. House, an MD, is suffering from an inoperable brain tumor.

It's fun to see STIs show up in the mainstream media, especially when they're already here, though there are no approved STI therapies for brain tumors. At least there's Gliadel.

Biotech Dates to Remember

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 04:34:00 +0000

Adam Feurerstein at TheStreet.com has published an excellent summary of expected drug approval and clinical development news.

kinase drugs with key dates in 2007
-label expansions for DNA (Avastin (breast) and Herceptin), IMCL (Erbitux for colon, lung, head/neck, pancreatic.)

kinase compounds in trials with key dates in 2007
-GSK's Tykerb (FDA approval decision in just 2 weeks)
-Wyeth Torisel (FDA approval decision in jless than a month)
-Ariad's mTor phase II data
-Phase II data on 4 EXEL compounds (XL647,784,880, and 999). (Should be a big year for EXEL.)

Not appearing on Feurerstein's calendar: FDA approval for Lilly's Arxxant, NVS' Tasigna, and perhaps the AZ's Zactima and NVS/Bayer PTK/ZK. I'd also expect to see the results of label expansion studies for Sutent, Nexavar, and Tarceva.

The link above goes to Feurerstein's article. Here's a Link to calendar

While you're there, check out Adam's columns. He's accurate, timely, and insightful, and definitely "gets it."

A couple of extra thoughts from 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:09:00 +0000

-Anybody else surprised that Iressa racked up nearly a quarter billion in revenue? I thought AZ was just maintaining Iressa in the hopes that biomarker/personalized medicine research would fully characterize responders with significant sales to come only after conclusive studies, but Iressa is still achieving good levels of revenue.

-it's early, but it doesn't look like Vectibix negatively affected Erbitux.

-For an eight year old drug, Herceptin's nearly half-billion dollar revenue gain is very impressive. (Uh, actually, a half-billion dollar revenue gain is great for anyone, anytime.)

-Earning honors as "First KD to drop off the list," Macugen probably will come very close to zeroing out in 2007, as OSI is exiting the business, as detailed today....

-.....because of Lucentis, which had an amazing introduction in 2006.

Wanna scare a CEO?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 04:16:00 +0000

Just say these 7 scary words: "Mr. Icahn is holding on line 2"

To a CEO, there's probably few things messages more dreaded than a call from Carl Icahn. (With the possible exception of the classic "I saw your daughter on Springer last night.")

King Carl apparently has developed a taste for biotech, following his experience with ImClone.

This month's lucky recipient of a call from Icahn is David Mott, CEO of Medimmune. Congrats, Dave!

I don't know Medimmune's story well enough to comment on what Icahn's interest in MEDI means and what actions might follow, but it's a good opportunity to see what this means for the industry.

One view might be that Icahn's involvement is likely to hurt the biotech industry as his activities might scuttle 2 viable biotech companies (IMCL and MEDI), either thru their outright sale, or by sacrificing R&D in order to increase short term earnings.

I tend to think, though, that Icahn's involvement is very positive, at least for the industry, if not for IMCL or MEDI. Here's 10 reasons why:

1. Interest by corporate raiders validates the biotech industry as viable businesses, rather than a collection of high-risk experiments.

2. Raider interest will attract other sources (non-alternative investments) of capital sends the message that biotech may be volatile, but not necessarily risky. (As opposed to the current notion that biotech is risky, but not necessarily volatile.)

3. Corporate raiders will keep biotech more slim and agile versus big pharma. (Though I've heard rumblings that some hedge fund could take down a pharma one of these days, so maybe this edge won't hold for long.)

4. Raiders force target companies to focus on "what's next," rather than complacently focusing on the sales and marketing of existing products.

5. Raiding will bring about needed consolidation among mid-sized biotechs, as the raiders view the overhead for companies at this size as a bad investment.

6. Raiders will increase the amount of business discipline within the industry. (And likely instigate management turnover, which could also be management evolution.)

7. Raiders will increase attention on the biotech industry.

8. Biotech has (and probably will always be) a game of capital raising. Raiders will bring more capital to the biotech industry, though the capital will tend to be higher-velocity.

9. Attention to financial returns by biotechs will increase among industry folks, as raider interest is in part related to the very high margins earned by biotechs. The high margins decrease risk for raiders, and can generate large amounts of incremental cash to justify raider transactions, if the margins are believed to be improvable.

10. Raiders (and other private equity types) may innovate new vehicles to finance biotech. One of these 'innovations' is quite old, but new to the biotech industry: dividends. (Icahn, in particular, often presses target boards to increase their dividend to drive stock prices.)

One other wildcard thought: there could be other angles to Icahn's involvement. What if Icahn were to instigate the combination of IMCL and MEDI (and perhaps others)? Ignoring the specific stories of IMCL and MEDI, there could be a nice cash flow generated from combining any mid-sized biotechs, with the surviving entity succeeding much like BiogenIdec. Hmmmm.

Note: these comments come from an N=2, but I tend to think that Icahn's pursuit of biotechs is representative of what's to come for the industry.

2006 kinase drug performance

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 03:45:00 +0000

With the release of OSI's 4Q and year-end financial statements, the sales results for all 12 kinase-targeting drugs are finally available for the year 2006.

And what a year it was.

Kinase-modulating therapies (KDs, or kinase drugs) generated $8.5B in revenue in 2006, with 53% growth over 2005. Both figures are especially impressive given the fact that five of the drugs have been on the market only since December, 2005, with ex-US approvals for these and others still growing.

A subset of these drugs with anti-angiogenesis effects totaled $4.6B, with 80% year over year growth. Drugs specifically targeting VEGF as cancer therapies totaled $2.1B, representing an 88% growth rate.

A quick glance at the 4th quarter indicates $2.5B in KD sales, equating to an annualized $10B. Assuming a simple organic growth rate of 20%, we're looking at $12B in sales, prior to expanded approvals and new product introductions.

New KD introductions could include, at a minimum, Tykerb (GSK), Torisel (WYE), Arxxant (Lilly), and potentially Tasignia (NVS). (Tykerb and Tasignia could cannibalize some existing sales.)

All told, we might see KDs contributing nearing $15B in annual sales in '07, with greater growth still to come.

Interesting reads

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 05:25:00 +0000

PWC: 7 health care trends for 2007.

"Forty-two blockbuster drugs will lose their patents in 2007." - Wow, I didn't realize it was that many.

Biotech industry thoughts from Gary Pisano as he plugs his very excellent new book.

Science Business: What Happened to Biotech?

Speaking about the fundamental business flaws of the biotech industry: "biotech suffered from a basic mismatch between the objectives and requirements of science and those of business. Specifically, Pisano argues, the business side of the industry was continually challenged by three characteristics of science: profound and persistent uncertainty, the complex and heterogeneous nature of the scientific knowledge base, and the rapid pace of scientific progress. "The health of the sector depends on how well it can cope with all three of these challenges," writes Pisano."

Making Biotech Work as a Business:

"R&D lead times—the time from clinical development to trials—increased from slightly less than thirty months in 1989 to around seventy months in 2002."

Update: Milkshake chips in his related thoughts here.

How do you make $210M in 3 years?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 05:12:00 +0000

Easy, if you're Invitrogen: start with $500M and buy a drug discovery services company (BioReliance).

Guh!

Based on public info, IVGN bought BREL for about 6X sales, and sold them 3 years later for 1.9X sales.

This news makes it onto this blog 'cuz:

1) IVGN, thru the former Panvera is the second best provider of kinase specificity testing,
2) the GM of BioReliance is an Upstate alum. (Good luck, Ted.)
3) This allows me to yet again tweak my friends at IVGN, Sue and Chris. Sue, still using that snorkel I sent you to find your IVGN stock options?

Nexavar vs. liver cancer: the winner is......

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:46:00 +0000

Frankly, me, and every other ONXX shareholder, as data strong enough to stop the trial has boosted ONXX by 95% so far today.

Read the linked article for something to ponder, though. ONXX partner Bayer projects PEAK Nexavar sales at ~$650M even WITH a liver cancer (5th most common cancer) approval, even with ~$130M in sales in the less than a year that Nexavar has been on the market. (And selling at a current annual run rate in excess of $150M.)

Is this yet another example of underestimating the market potential of targeted drugs? (Remember how Daniel Vasella said at introduction that NVS expects Gleevec sales of a few hundred million dollars a year? (vs. $2.6B in 2006.))

Pre-IND= ~$750,000

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 03:11:00 +0000

SGX announced that they've selected a Met inhibitor for pre-clinical development - SGX-523, which apparently is worth $750k, as SGX stock rose $.05 on the news.

SGX - with ~$37M in cash on hand, is valued at ~$61M (incl. cash), valuing their entire platform and pipeline (the Met program and a pre-clinical bcr-abl program) at $24M. Sadly, this values a pre-clinical lead at around $10M.

This makes SGX either a zombie, or prone for a big upward explosion sooner or later, as it wouldn't be hard to imagine SGX being scooped up by a bigger fish, given interesting data. Strictly speaking, SGX intends to file 2 INDs in the next 12 months, each worth ~$100M each (= a gain of $180M above the value already built), meaning that if SGX delivers and the industry norms hold, SGX stock would quadruple (though some cash and value would be burned over period leading up to the filings.)

Of course, this all depends on the math holding, and there's a significant downside, as with any drug development.

But the SGX story is more interesting than that - SGX has a service business (contract structural genomic analysis) where SGX resells access to their beamline facility. In the first 9 months of '06, SGX earned $13M in service revenue.

The same 9 month income statement shows a loss of $23M on that $13M revenue, but a large part of the loss is due to spending on a now canceled late stage clinical program. A naive guess says that of SGX's $35M in R&D YTD, $25M or more related to the canceled program, meaning that SGX COULD be at least breakeven on an ongoing basis, which is a good thing, since I don't think they're going to raise any cash soon.

Miscellany

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 20:46:00 +0000

Forbes, with an assist from In the Pipeline thinks BMS and Sanofi shouldn't pair up. I'm really surprised that more people haven't looked at the historical performance of pharma M & A - it's overwhelmingly not pretty.

Somewhat related, Forbes comments on IMCL - "Nowhere to go but up." Gotta think that IMCL's future hinges on what happens with BMS. Another point: this article reflects thinking that IMCL's valuation is solely based on financial performance, meaning no one really is putting any value on the pipeline.

Research and Markets says Discovery to IND takes 6.5 years and 40% of the total R & D budget for a program. Gotta think these numbers reflect the requirement to discovery a target, as well as a compound.

DNA making big immunology bet

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 05:32:00 +0000

I hadn't realized that DNA had raised their immunology efforts to such an explicit priority as mentioned in this article (and why would they?)

One interesting question for DNA: will their solutions also be biologicals, as most of their current oncology offerings? They certainly have the expertise to do so, but you could argue that other companies (particularly Amgen) have a big head start in this area.

The other interesting stat in this article: DNA went 15 for 15 in it's critical trials (Avastin, etc.), which the company pegs the odds of success at 1 in 300,000,000.

Not to diminish anything that DNA has accomplished, but I think this stat would only be correct if these 15 compounds were developed in one insanely profitable month of serial chemical synthesis. The 15/15 1:300M odds are built on a probability of one success at 1 in 9155 (.0109%), which I think is Genentech's parallel for the old saw of "1 in 10,000 compounds ever receive FDA approvals."

The best analysis would be to identify which starting point these 15 success all have in common. For fun, let's assume the accomplishment is 15 straight compounds to go from IND to FDA approval. If you believe as some do that an IND compound has a 1 in 10 chance of FDA approval, then Genentech's accomplishment has odds more like 1:32768. (I'm a little rusty, but I think the chance of doing anything 15 times in a row is 2 (to the) 15th (32768) times the probability of one success. Anyone want to check my math?)

UPDATE, based upon actual math that works: 1:300M represents 15 consecutive successful trials each with a ~27% chance of success, which is probably DNA's assumed success rate for a compound reaching Phase I trials. (The Milken template suggests 20% for NCEs, and acknowledges that biologicals have slightly higher success rates.)

It's more likely, though, that the 15 trials cited by DNA include multiple trials for single compounds, and various stages of trials (i.e. does this figure include Rituxan trials for RA? If so, Phase 1 trials really weren't risky (or perhaps even necessary).

No matter the math involved, DNA's accomplishment is impressive!

Interesting story of Scios' CEO and p38 program

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 23:25:00 +0000

I think in the news biz they'd call this a human interest story: Scios' then-CEO's battle with multiple myeloma inspired the company to try their p38 inhibitor in multiple myeloma.

Unfortunately, following the article, Scios' compound ran into tox issues, so it never made it to market (particuarly for it's first application, RA), but at least it appears that the CEO is still alive and kicking - a quick GOOG search shows news articles about him in 2006, so presumably he's very healthy.

Top 100 2006 Publications

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 04:24:00 +0000

The Kinase Research Portal has compiled what they consider the 100 best/most popular articles of the last year. The list (via the linked header for this post) is could be used as means of taking the pulse of kinase research.

Takeaways:
-gene target interest is very broad. I counted at least 25 different gene targets as article themes.

-well-understood targets draw the most attention: Bcr-Abl and EGFR papers were the theme of at least 12 of the 100 papers.

-the most popular article subject without a drug yet developed: PI-3 (6 articles)

-the most popular article: Dario Alessi's seminal LKB1 article.

-surprising attention: DAPK (though with only 3 articles, one shouldn't read too much into this.)

-notable for it's absence: RAF (only article #100), popular RTK targets VEGFR and PDGFR. Also, I think there was only one Aurora-themed article, and little attention to cell cycle kinases in general.

Way cool kinase target popularity charts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 04:18:00 +0000

The Kinase Research Portal has a cool application (linked in the header to this post) that shows kinase publication history and allows you to see target-specific publication trend graphs. Here's an example showing p38 publication trends (with a surprisingly steep upward trajectory.)

Why drugs fall short in late-stage trials

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 05:51:00 +0000

Kick-ass article from McKinsey reviewing why drugs fail in P3, based on >650 small molecule trials since 1990.

Notes:

-over all diseases, 42% of leads failed P3, slightly worse than most models anticipate. (The Milken Model anticipates a 33% failure rate at this stage for small molecules.)

-of the failures that could be studied, 50% failed due to efficacy. (Kinda late to find that out, eh?)

-biology still matters in P3 - novel mechanisms of action generated a disproportionate amount (2X) of drop-outs, even in P3.

-quantitative endpoints (biomarkers) improve the likelihood of P3 success.

Tarceva: running in place?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 05:25:00 +0000

One other note from the DNA earnings numbers: Tarceva sales grew 27% year over year and 7% sequentially (total: $107M). Very bad news for OSI. DNA is more motivated to push Avastin for solid tumors, so Tarceva is probably undermarketed by something between $500M and $1B.

I wonder if OSI can buy back their product from Genentech, perhaps financed by a big pharma sugar daddy like NVS. If you slap DNA's P/E on Tarceva, the price would be something like $21B (versus OSI's valuation of $1.9B) so I can't imagine this happening soon. Unfortunately, OSI's current valuation doesn't really argue for an acquisition by DNA, and that doesn't even take into account the potential anti-trust concerns of such a merger.

Aurora

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 04:39:00 +0000

Crimson Canary has an unbelievably good summary of Aurora kinase efforts, totally obviating a similar list that I kept in a messy excel sheet.

Hat tip to the Maestro of Mean Med Chem, the Sultan of Cynical Solubility, KinasePro :) .

DNA keeps rolling (4Q earnings)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 04:18:00 +0000

DNA is no doubt an outstanding company with exceptional near and long term growth prospects, but is it a good investment?

DNA - or perhaps the Google of biotech - just reported another solid quarter and full year.

DNA's '06 accomplishments bear repeating: 8 FDA approvals in '06, a slew of in-license deals, and a 40% rise in revenues.

Just to dwell on Avastin for a moment, '06 revenue increased 54% to $1.75B, with fourth quarter growth of 36% (or 13% sequentially - a good year in one quarter!) Results like this make it hard to remember that the product is less than 2 years old, and approved in only 2 indications (MSCLC and Colon), though likely to show benefit in many other solid tumors. I haven't found any analysts willing to project >$3B in revenue for Avastin, but I'd take the "over" on that bet.

(btw: the market has ALWAYS been behind in Avastin appreciation. In less than 2 years, Avastin has already busted some analyst's peak projections.)

'07 and beyond look great too - company issued guidance puts EPS growth at 25-30%. (Versus fourth quarter's 75% EPS growth.) Using this as a marker for revenue growth suggests that DNA growth is declining basically only because of the law of large numbers, as the growth range puts new revenue for '07 roughly equivalent for '06 ($2.6B in '06, $2.3B-$2.8B) Yep, DNA is likely to deliver >$2B in fortress-like* revenue growth, without any substantial new product introductions (I think.)

(* fortress-like, as the majority of the revenue is derived from young biological products unlikely to face generic competition for a while, with a wide moat of clinical trials data keeping competing products at bay. DNA has more than 250 different clinical trials ongoing using existing products.)

Across all industries, it's been my experience that growth stories eventually play out one of two ways: shallow growth stories eventually peter out, after a period of management attempts to maintain growth momentum thru financial levers such as M & A (Invitrogen), fraud (Healthsouth and MCI come to mind), or, with skeptics mounting, a high quality team delivers as promised, and then some (see Google, Commerce Bank, or White Mountain Insurance.) DNA sure looks to me like a company that ultimately belongs in the latter category.

The only problem is valuation. DNA has a very GOOG-like TTM P/E of 51 and a forward P/E of 30, based on '07 consensus of $2.94. (This might not reflect earnings revisions issued in the last week).

By comparison, Merck - valued at roughly the same as DNA - has 2.3X as much revenue and P/Es of 19.5 and 17.5 (forward).

But with the monstrous growth provided by existing products, extensive upside from >250 clinical trials, and monstrous R & D expansion (which could be throttled back to make EPS numbers in the future, DNA is and will continue to be the GOOG of biotech, making it a great choice for the future.

Sutent now a first line therapy for RCC in Europe

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 20:20:00 +0000

Cancer death rate falls again!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 19:20:00 +0000

For the 2nd year in a row, cancer death rates in the US have fallen. Researchers cite changes in behavior (smoking, etc.) as the main driver for the improvement

These figures are for 2004, so much of the progress in targeted therapies is not yet reflected in the statistics. However, the biggest %age drop in death rates occurred in colorectal cancer, which could be influenced by the use of Erbitux and Avastin - both approved in 2004.

One stunning nugget from the ACS stats: males have a 45.3% chance of developing a cancer during their lifetime. (Women: 37.8%)

Speaking of Gleevec....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 04:02:00 +0000

Long term study results from early targeted therapies are starting to come in. In CML, some 95 percent have survived the cancer after five years due to treatment with Gleevec. (I don't have the pre-Gleevec survival rates, but will try to track them down.)

Also: "Even high-risk patients have close to a 70 percent chance of getting to what we call a complete cytogenetic response, which is an optimal response to the drug. That is still six or seven times better than they ever could have hoped for with the previous standard therapy. So, even for high-risk patients, the likelihood of responding is quite high."

Gleevec is being followed by nilotinib (NVS) and dasatanib (BMS), and will hopefully improve these numbers. What I can't make sense of, though, is the choice of this disease (and these drug targets) as the main focus of a number of other biotech companies.

I understand and appreciate the scientific merit, and there is perhaps a business boost thru the validation that the preceeding therapies provide, but just off the top of my head, I can name several entrants:

Ariad
BMS (dasatanib)
Breakthrough Therapeutics
Chemgenex
Curagen/Topotarget
Innovive
Merck/Vertex
Novartis (Nilotinib)
Structural Genomics
even a DoD funded team at VCU
(plus, I feel like I'm blanking on one or two more)

I really hope this effort results in the eradication of the disease, but surely, even if that is accomplished, 3 to 5 companies will swing hard and create a drug therapy, but ultimately wish that they'd spent their time on something else instead of coming in 3rd or 4th in a 2-horse race.

Is this a call for government regulation of R & D targets? Not quite, especially since I'm a raging libertarian, but you can't help but make parallels to the days before government regulation of the electricity distribution business (early 1900's) when as many as 20 different companies' wires serviced some neighborhoods, pre-regulation.