| | | Greetings all. I'm new here, and felt obligated to say something about Ariad given the news of the Brigatinib NDA acceptance. I'm a retired financier that funded the equipment for some of Ariad's labs when they were a startup, and spent many years financing biotech companies throughout California. I am also a lung cancer survivor currently on Genentech's ALK inhibitor Alectinib. I was previously on Xalkori for seven months until it failed, and Alecensa has put me in complete remission.
I've been on Alecensa for 14 months now, which is two months past the average time to progression on the drug. The next drug I would take if Alecensa fails is Brigatinib, so approval means more to me than most. I've been following the available information on the trial results for Brigatinib very closely, and it appears that this is the best drug yet for ALK based metastatic lung cancer, as it addresses all of the known mutations that cause the other drugs to fail.
This is going to be a huge seller for Ariad given that 3% or more of the 250,000 new lung cancer cases are ALK positive. That's at least 7,500 new cases per year,and there is no cure. Brigatinib will be the drug of choice and/or last resort for all of us cycling through the other temporary solutions of varying efficacy (Xalkori, Xycadia, Alecensa). There is also data to support Brigatinib as the preferred first-line ALK lung cancer choice, as it seems to work better and last longer than the other three as a first-line treatment.
Medicare pays Genentech/Roche $13,000/month for the Alecensa I'm on, so if Ariad captures one year's worth of patients at that rate than their market is in excess of $1B/year. If the research and ongoing experience is correct and recurrence on these drugs is inevitable, then virtually all of us on the other three drugs will eventually wind up on Brigatinib sooner or later. Upon approval the hundreds of patients in the clinical trial will convert to paying customers. On a steady basis many of the Alecensa, Xycadia, and Xalkori patients will unfortunately be experiencing progression, and need to switch to Brigatinib in a hurry.
The other ALK drugs fail because the cancer cells mutate into different forms that those drugs do not address. Brigatinib addresses all of the mutations that cause the other drugs to fail. Ariad's stock price dropped upon FDA acceptance of the Brigatinib NDA. This looks like an opportunity to me. |
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