November 18, 1999
DJ QLT Photo Sees 2000 Visudyne Revs Of $90M-$100M
By Tamsin Carlisle
VANCOUVER (Dow Jones)--QLT PhotoTherapeutics Inc. (QLTI) chief financial officer Kenneth Galbraith projected that Visudyne therapy will generate between $90 million and $100 million of revenues in 2000 for QLT and its partner Ciba Vision.
In an interview, Galbraith told Dow Jones that QLT's revenue projection for the experimental treatment for age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, an eye disease, assumes that Ciba begins marketing Visudyne in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2000, and in Europe and Canada in the second half of the year.
Galbraith said the projection also relies on "well-established" data on the incidence of AMD, indicating that each year there are at least 200,000 new cases in North America, about 200,000 new cases in Europe and roughly 100,000 new cases in the rest of the world.
He said he expects between 25,000 and 30,000 patients to start using Visudyne therapy next year.
Galbraith further projected that peak sales of Visudyne will reach about $500 million annually within three to four years of the product being launched. He said that projection assumes that between 140,000 and 150,000 patients receive Visudyne therapy during the peak sales period, with each patient receiving three to four treatments a year over two years.
Galbraith said he considers the peak revenue projection "conservative" in view of the incidence of AMD, the severe consequences of the disease if left untreated, and the current lack of effective alternative treatments. The projection takes into account a number of potential factors that might prevent some AMD patients from receiving Visudyne, he added, including lack of access to the therapy, difficulties with reimbursement, failure of QLT and Ciba to obtain marketing clearance for Visudyne to treat all forms of AMD, and future competition from new treatments for AMD.
Galbraith said some analysts may have lower revenue projections for Visudyne based on out-dated estimates of AMD incidence. The number of patients with AMD, a disease causing vision loss and blindness in mainly elderly people, is increasing by between 4% and 6% annually as the general population ages, he estimated.
On Wednesday, an advisory panel to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration recommended that Visudyne be approved for treating the wet, or severe, form of AMD. If approved, the the light-activated drug used in Visudyne therapy would be manufactured by QLT and marketed worldwide by Ciba.
QLT is a biotechnology company. Ciba is a unit of Novartis AG (Z.NOV).
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