IDPH--Positive preliminary results for pivotal trial of ID Message Board

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Biotech / Medical : IDPH--Positive preliminary results for pivotal trial of ID

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To: I. Luttichuys who wrote (555)	4/5/1997 5:58:00 PM
From: Brad C. Dunlap	of 1762

Hi Bennett, it could get real interesting and especially with something with such huge potential as CE9.1. Here is an interesting point. About 1 1/2 yrs ago smithkline started to build a plant to specifically manufacture CE9.1 upon mkt approval. Now I'm sure they had a back-up use for this plant in case something were to go wrong with CE9.1 in the clinicals. Smithkline has now started to manufacture a second plant to manufacture CE9.1 which is a real vote of confidence and it also shows that they're looking at large potential demand in the sense that one plant wasn't going to meet their estimated demand. My understanding is that the cost of this second facility is greater then the cost of the entire phase III clinical. I heard the president of Immunex in an interview in which he stated their phase III for RA would cost them around $35 million. Idec/smithkline with the different dosages and many additional patients in their phase III should be considerably greater in cost then the $35 million that immunex is incurring. I think Rick touched on this point in an earlier post. This could be a strong explanation why smithkline has sold a large % of their holdings to fund these expenditures. I don't have Idec's latest prospectus in front of me but Merrill lynch/Morgan stanley partnership owned about 1 million shares of Idec with the majority belonging to merrill lynch. Well this stock is now free to sell and I have a very strong suspicion that this is part of the reason for the tremendous weakness in the stock. Not only was Merrill the big seller on the level 2 screan but I also heard from a reputable source that indeed it was this partnership stock that was flooding the mkt. I'm sure the weakness in the broad mkt and biotech industry amplified the move downwards in price. I quess one might be concerned why Merrill is selling if indeed they are selling. One thing that I know is that I gave up along time ago trying to figure why someone sells their stock. Of course its very easy to figure why a party buys stock and that is to make money. I still believe that our good friend Eric Hecht is watching things very closely and one of these days he might surprise us. By the way as far as I have seen what Eric has recommended at Merrill is just Centocour and his timing was perfect. When Eric was at morgan his three strong buy recommendations were Idec,centocour, and Medimune. This week should be very interesting with the San Diego biotech conference that Idec will be attending. This is the same conference that Idec attended last year and the stock made a nice % move after their presentations. If the overall mkt can start to tread water instead of all of the aggressive selling, Idec's stock should have a good week. I quess in the short run the big question is the overall mkt and we'll find out first thing Monday morning.

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