Comments on ICN.
1- Rebetol is the trade name for ribavirin.
2 - Rebetron is the trade name for a combination of ribavirin and Intron A.
3 - I pulled this from an SEC filing of ICN:
In addition, future royalties from Schering-Plough may also decrease if
competing therapies are developed for the treatment of hepatitis C. Competing
therapies may include:
-- Copegus, a form of ribavirin, being developed by F. Hoffmann-La Roche;
-- generic or follow-on forms of ribavirin manufactured by others, including
Geneva Pharmaceuticals Technology Corporation, Three Rivers
Pharmaceuticals, LLC and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc.;
-- pegylated interferon developed by F. Hoffmann-La Roche;
-- Infergen being developed by InterMune, Inc.;
-- Albuferon being developed by Human Genome Sciences, Inc.;
-- natural interferon being developed by Viragen, Inc.; and
-- protease and polymerase inhibitors being developed by Eli Lilly and
Company, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, ViroPharma Incorporated,
American Home Products Corporation, Schering-Plough, Merck & Co. Inc. and
Boehringer Ingelheim.
Other companies that engage in research activities similar to our research
activities include Abbott Laboratories, Chiron Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Company, Triangle Pharmaceuticals, Inc., GlaxoSmithKline plc and Novartis AG.
4 - ICN/RNA without ribavirin could lose 80% of its market cap. With 3 companies filing to take ribavirin generic (~Aug 2001) and Roche filing for approval of its own "ribavirin" (Copegus) there some significant risk. |
