tommysdad,
Your shots are worth a lot, in my book.
>>I had never heard of them until I wandered into the NZYM thread on SI. Haven't bought a thing from them. I have bought amino acids from Aldrich, Sigma, NovoBiochem, and the like. But, really, why are they concentrating on biotech? That's probably not where the big money is. Many of the best biotech-discovered drugs will likely be developed by big pharma anyway.<<
Below is the link to the specialty amino-acid catalogue. From there one can surf to their common amino-acid catalogue. See anything you like? How are they doing against the folks you mention above?
synthetech.clipper.net
I mis-regurgitated when I said they were scanning the biotech universe for customers. They certainly are after big pharma. I believe those two big orders were from Pfizer and F. Hoffman LaRoche.
>>OK, how about 1999? According to Volume 35 of "Annual Reports", 33 small molecule NCEs were introduced last year. A grand total of 5 are in any way "peptidic" or amino-acid derived. Out of those five, Cetrorelix (Asta Medica) has some cool amino acids, but Synercid is just a 70:30 ratio of two established semi-synthetic antibiotics. CHF-1301 is simply the methyl ester of L-DOPA. Eptifibatide (another anti-thrombotic, interestingly) has six very natural amino acids, while the antidiabetic nateglinide is simply an acylated version of phenyl alanine.
So, while there are indeed 15% NCEs containing amino acids this year, only one (3%) would have been a candidate for using NZYM's expertise. So, combined with my reading of the literature, I am very comfortable with a figure of 10% or so. (So?)<<
You managed to pick two of NZYM's leanest years. They were cranking those big orders in the middle 90s; I specifically remember one in '96. Since you and NZYM seem to hover in the vicinity of 10%, it doesn't seem worth splitting that hair much further. Particularly since 2000 seems to be shaping up as another lean one.
You seem to imply that natural amino acids are more cheaply obtained/produced tahn synthetic ones. Is that indeed so?
Many thanks for your input.
Cheers, Tuck |
