IMO, recent VRTX and MLNM deal indicate that pharma are interested (and willing to invest heavily) for *broad advance technology*, which can significantly increase their own pipeline and give some assurance that they will have good flow of new drugs on market.
Pharma, so far and more indicative lately, aren't going for individual target/candidate very often, not at early stage collaboration. However, I am sure that they are *watching* each of them at bios and accordingly they will act.
On the other hand bios intention are to increase value of their program by pushing licensing/partnering time to the end-stage of the development cycle.
This is healthy for bios and competition (bios versus pharma). Still there is danger that luck of experience and knowledge how to conduct early stage trials (or cutting the corners issue) can kill good candidates.
Looking at the first opportunity from *genomic info*, secreted proteins as positive factor and regulator candidates may benefit first.
Here, specially large molecules and proteins delivery technologies developed by bios (EMIS, ALKS, ...), platform bios may benefit significantly in near future.
Regardless that mAb are faster *passing* through development process I think that competition from *small molecules* candidates will be there for *negative regulation* of the new targets.
mAb based candidate did show (in last few years and significantly in last few months) that they are vulnerable to *clinical failure* (AMGN, DNA, BGEN, IDPH,.. have mAb candidate failure). We ( I mean bioscience) still have to learn about fine factors involved in complex chemical and biological interaction for mAb in humans.
On the other hand small molecules database information (drug pharmacology, pharmacokinetic, medicinal chemistry, drug interaction, metabolism,...) are growing rapidly and prediction of candidate characteristic is easy to make today that few years back.
Also, we have exponential grow in candidate poll (combi. chem., comp. chem., structure based relation and interaction,...), so more potent and selective molecule will emerge for old and new targets.
All in all, I think that hype on mAb over small mol. advantage is over-blowing. If you, or anyone else, investigate sales revenue from new (break true) drugs on market for last two years, it will find good results from both side, but small molecule still bit mAb in $$$ generated on market. We all know why!
Miljenko
PS: I did bet small portion of my portfolio on mAb bios: MEDX and ALXN (recently). |
