[A fool and his money]---May 29, 1998/FOOLWIRE/ -- Bothell, Wash.-based
biotechnology
company ICOS Corp. (Nasdaq: ICOS) surged $4 13/16 to $21 1/16 after Business
Week's "Inside Wall Street" column reported that the company is developing
an impotence drug that could be better than Pfizer's (NYSE: PFE) popular new
pill Viagra. The magazine hyped the drug as "the son of Viagra" and quoted
Jim McCamant, editor of a medical technology newsletter in Berkeley, Calif.,
as saying that ICOS' IC351 drug ''will be a potentially better product...
because it has fewer side effects.'' This was news to the company itself,
which has finished one small Phase 2 trial, is continuing with a bigger
Phase 2 trial of IC351, and has yet to release any clinical data on the
drug. With the rest of the Phase 2 trial, Phase 3, and application for FDA
approval still to go, the company told us it doesn't expect to see a product
launch until at least 2000 or 2001. Again, as in the case of
cancer-drug-seeking EntreMed (Nasdaq: ENMD), this is another instance of the
media hyping old news and getting all excited about a drug that won't be
available for at least a few years.
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