Harold, I saw the story. It appears that Abarelix does what it takes three other drugs to do. I believe that this should give it a cost benefit over the current treatment regime. The article also said that Abarelix “reduced levels of testosterone, a male hormone that fuels the growth of prostate cancer cells, faster than the standard treatment.” In addition, the bionic market posts on the Yahoo board give evidence that Abarelix’s competition, LUPRON, has serious problems. First, there appears to be a pending settlement of around $800MM against the makers of LUPRON for price fixing that resulted in defrauding Medicare. These are federal charges. We should wait to see the final results on that issue, but it would be a serious black eye for LUPRON, and it would certainly span many class action suits for overcharging from both users as well as states. LUPRON has sales of about $1.0B per year.
In addition, the LUPRON victims network (msg 829-31-yahoo) seems to have a lot of data that LUPRON has serious side effects for both prostrate cancer and endometriosis. PRCS has stated that with 200,000 patient contacts with Abarelix, there have been no adverse events. This, of course, will have to be further substantiated after market approval.
The Reuters article indicates, in my opinion, that Abarelix has treatment advantages over the current treatment standard for prostrate cancer. PRCS has also said that it appears that Abarelix is the only prostrate treatment that acts as an inhibitor on follicle stimulating hormones, which apparently also cause prostrate cancer to progress and are associated with the development of more advanced prostrate cancer. PRCS believes that its drug shows down the advancement of prostrate cancer. An ongoing trial should provide clinical data on this issue by the end of this year. Lets hope that the FDA acts by June 12 or shortly thereafter.
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