I doubt Mad cow will drive sales of Surfaxin, nice noise for marketing, but just noise.
I doubt the "superiority" issue too. It could turn out to be, but I do not see the facts out yet. The combination of the Curosurf and Survanta data to claim that Surfaxin is superior to the "animal derived" seems more noise than fact.
Cheap and bioequivalent is more than enough to take market, maybe the company feels that they could play the superiority business and charge a "premiun", but I do not buy that argument, remember betamax? apple? One could argue the Sepracor case, but luck was important,(xopenex is not superior, but they were able to market the alleged benefits vs albuterol).
Despite the superior quantity of protein Infasurf and Curosurf have not proven better than Survanta, and have not taken more than 5% of the market (if more, not much more) in the USA.
One study (not sure if in humans) shows decrease proteinaceous material in bronchial excretions with the use of Surfaxin vs animal derived products, this suggests less membrane leaking because of less damage and/or protective actions. Maybe, it will turn out to be a very important finding and eventually to correlate with better clinical outcomes, but not there yet.
This could explain in part the "anti-inflammatory" properties. But, most of the anti-inflammatory properties of surfactants (and anti infective actions) comes from SpA and SpD, none is present in Surfaxin, very little if any in animal derived products.
Surfaxin is more resistant to bacterial degradation, it remains to be seen if this quality adds to clinical efficacy.
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