>> I too wonder what the investors of Immunex thought throughout the years of 1994, 1995, 1996, as their money sat "dead". <<
Immunex, Seattle's favorite, had plenty of rocky times and FDA setbacks before its current success. Over the years, American Home Products became the majority stockholder. I think AHP today owns something like 90% of IMNX. For all practical purposes, Immunex IS American Home Products.
This is true even though Immunex has only 39.9M shares outstanding, about the same as Ligand.
(Many of the original IMNX people have spun off into innovative 3rd-tier biotechs, like Corixa.)
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>> However, I would question how any kind of news could be leaking from the Targretin trials <<
Likewise. But what bothers me is that, EXCEPT for CTCL, Ligand has announced almost nothing in the way of interim results for all the Phase II and Phase II/III trials for Targretin against solid tumors, even though most of those trials have been ongoing since 1996 or early 1997. Unlike diabetes trials, trials against late-stage cancers can be relatively short. (I've read all the press releases back to Aug, 1996. I can list the interim results in a handful of sentences, and they are not specific regarding efficacy - but mostly mention dosage tolerances.)
On the other hand, Ligand has thoroughly publicized the good PRE-CLINICAL results for Targretin against ABC for the animal model.
Because of the long silence, I tend to guess that results against large human tumors have been disappointing. If statistically significantly many people with solid tumors were now alive -- or had their lives extended -- because of Panretin and Targretin, Ligand would have told us by now, imo.
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It seems to me that Ligand is on a fishing expedition (and this is NOT perjorative; that is what biotech research IS), looking for a cancer that is sufficiently affected by panretin/targretin.
Since Ligand's drugs have an affinity for the estrogen receptor, the best bets may be breast and ovarian cancer. Let's hope Ligand catches a big fish this year, for ABC. |
