sam, Here's a reasonably positive AGPH put out by the San Diego Tribune earlier this week:
Agouron to offer upbeat data on AIDS drug
Thomas Kupper
STAFF WRITER | Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
03-Feb-1998 Tuesday
Agouron Pharmaceuticals hopes new data this week on the effectiveness and
convenience of its Viracept drug will help the company sustain its momentum
in the increasingly competitive field of AIDS treatments.
The San Diego company is expected to present study results today that
suggest Viracept works when taken twice a day instead of the usual three
doses -- offering a big improvement for AIDS patients who typically must
take many medications with complicated dietary and dosing requirements.
Other studies the company plans to unveil at a conference in Chicago will
show that some patients continue to respond to Viracept after two years and
will explore whether Viracept patients develop resistances to other AIDS
drugs.
The presentations by Agouron -- and competitors who also will appear -- are
part of a battle for position in an AIDS market that is expected to grow to
as much as $5 billion within a few years as drugs emerge and treatments
continue to improve.
"The big issue is that there are more and more drugs available to treat
AIDS," said analyst Charles Engleberg of AmeriCal Securities. "How this is
going to play out, with all of these combinations available, is unclear."
Viracept, the first San Diego biotech drug to win federal approval, is a
protease inhibitor, part of the "cocktails" that have dramatically improved
the outlook for AIDS patients. The drug has made Agouron profitable in less
than a year and has nearly overtaken Viracept's most popular competitor, a
drug from Merck.
In the most recent quarter, Agouron reported profits of $4.9 million on
sales of $104.7 million, and since then Viracept has received approval from
the European Union.
But the fast-changing nature of the AIDS market was underscored yesterday
by new data from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a Massachusetts biotech with a
protease inhibitor in development. The company, which hopes to seek
government approval this year, said its drug appeared "highly potent" in
combination with other protease inhibitors.
Use of more than one protease is a trend among AIDS patients, and Agouron
also will issue data on Viracept's effectiveness with other drugs.
"The potency that we're seeing is unprecedented," said Joshua Boger, Vertex
chief executive. "You're seeing very significant drops (in HIV levels) in
even two weeks."
Forums such as this week's Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic
Infections -- where Carlsbad-based Isis Pharmaceuticals also will present
trial results for a drug for AIDS-related blindness -- are important
because treatment regimens continue to evolve and because many HIV patients
are waiting to begin treatments until more is known.
Such issues as convenience and potential resistances to other drugs are
important to patients who may have trouble switching once they start one
drug regimen.
In Agouron's study of twice-daily dosing, preliminary data showed results
were comparable with those for patients who took the drug three times a
day. In both cases, the virus was undetectable in 74 percent of patients
after 32 weeks of treatment.
Some doctors already are putting their patients on twice-a-day protease
dosing, and are likely to take effectiveness at that dose into
consideration when choosing a drug.
"It's probably going to come out that it's safe to use any of the protease
inhibitors two times a day," Engleberg said.
Another study to be released today found that eight patients in a study
group of 12 continued on Viracept for two years with the virus still
undetectable. Because Viracept has been on the market less than a year,
there is limited data on how long it works.
In that study, investigators also found that patients who failed on
Viracept were able to resume treatment successfully on other protease
inhibitors. Agouron says a lack of so-called "cross-resistance" may be an
advantage for its drug, but that is still under study.
"These results suggest that in the event of treatment failure, carefully
managed patients may preserve their treatment options over time," said the
study's principal investigator, Dr. Martin Markowitz of the Aaron Diamond
AIDS Research Center in New York.
Agouron shares, which were hammered in the autumn as the company halted its
No. 2 drug project, have rebounded 22 percent from a Dec. 11 low. The stock
closed yesterday at $34.56 1/4 , down 18 3/4 cents. |
