[ ICOS ]
Ray:
You picked a fun one.
This is the company that got George Rathman, the most effective manager in the history of biotech, when he left Amgen.
This is the company that first attracted the attention of Bill Gates as a biotech investor.
But, that said........ here's the fun part...... downside risk may have been taken out of this stock from Viagra (sildenafil), a phosphodiesterase V (PDE5) inhibitor.
ICOS has a great pipeline. The mission of the company is to become an integrated biopharmaceutical company, and that vision is alive. The clinical strategy is to start with a novel molecular mechanism, to conduct a single phase I safety study, and to target multiple diseases in phase II studies with a single entity. The projects that have drawn early attention are anti-inflammatories (a humanized monoclonal antibody specific for an "integrin", and rPAF-AH, a natural human enzyme that degrades a strong mediator of inflammation known as platelet activating factor). Personally, I think that these projects have a good shot. There's also a cool antibody (anti-ICAM-3)in phase II trials for psoriasis.
However, I also believe that some investors will start to say "who gives a damn, they have IC351, a PDE5 inhibitor, completing phase II trials for male erectile disfunction this year".
A $10 billion/year drug? Heck, we can double that now.....
biz.yahoo.com
Rathman says that the phase I studies to establish safety were "extensive".
Cheers! Rick
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