One of the points made on this week's cc, by George ____, the CSO, on S-469 was that SCIO scientists had managed to make the molecule "very selective" in terms of half-life in the body, receptor selectivity and toxicity. The language used by the CSO in describing this feat was in very lay terms. But I was struck by the "facility" that SCIO claimed in producing the molecule to heighten receptor and reduce toxic selectivity, as if this were a relatively manageable and predictable feat in the lab. Is it so "easy" to be "selective", in the way described? Now, VRTX (wasn't it VRTX that last year had a p38 kinase inhibitor failure due to toxicity concerns?) which had acquired the strong chemistry and engineering of ABSC (probably too early for that trial) couldn't do that.
While, obviously, SCIO's candidate has not established itself and trial data are many months off (although, hints on the cc seemed to indicate that toxicity data may be good), I guess I found the response to be well, glib.
(By the way, the response to progress in the clinic on p38 was to the same questioner who posited that nesiritide may grow to peak sales of $500 m--hard to tell if the analyst was shilling.)
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