The IGE Blocker prospect was why I was trying to get asthma and allergy physicians to have a private exchange. I did not want to ignite the shorts.
I have managed to get one to reply. Below is what I said to them, and below that is asthmadoc99's reply. By the way, the phase III test required only one injection per month, so injections can not be a bad issue.
Bottom line the one reply I got said my drug of concern is a non-starter.
Our exchange went as follows:
Thanks for the reply Doc. I am a 52 year old
chemical engineer by training, so biochemistry is not my strong point. Isomers I understand.
Last fall and again this spring NBC nightline ran a
piece on an IGE
blocker test coming out of Phase III tests in June.
AMGN and Novartis
are co-sponsoring a drug developed by Tanox.
I have allergies, some of which can not be
desensitized such a mite
dust.
If I understand it correctly, this IGE blocker
sounds like a silver
bullet for all allergies, even food allergies. If
this drug is for real
it could be a serious threat to the allergy and
asthma symptom treatment
portion of the SEPR pipeline. These drugs represent
a significant
portion of the potential for SEPR so I am worried
about my SEPR
investment potential. (ie the reason for this off
track exchange)
Have you seen evidence or mention of the potential
of this Tanox drug
yet? What is you feeling on an IGE blocker? One of
the issues as I
understand it, is it could be so powerful that it
might shutdown the
entire auto-imune(sp?) system. Have you heard of
any similar
comprehensive prevention drugs in testing that block
IGE or perform
similarly, if so what drugs and who is the maker?
As far as investing, Tanox is a private company, for
which you need $1MM
networth or successive years of $300,000 income to
talk about buying stock. They have no intent to go
public, as of a couple of months ago. Their link is
tanox.com
From:
asthmadoc
Your question is a very good one.
I am not participating in any of the anti-IgE studies,
but I do know of some specialists who are. From what
I have heard and read, it is not looking very
promising so far. It sounds like it is not very
effective. Even more so, the drug does not seem to
last long in the bloodstream. The way it works is
that the anti-IgE drug combines with IgE in the blood,
and then the complexes are removed by the body.
However, some of the trials have shown that the body
just produces more and more IgE, so the effects of the
drug are overcome. This could then potentially be
dangerous, since there would be a number of immune
complexes floating around that could cause disease.
Another potential problem is that the body could
develop antibodies to the drug itself, so the patient
might start having reactions to the shots after a
couple of months.
I think that this drug is not going to work very well,
and the researchers will have to go back to the
drawing boards. I am not recommending anti-IgE to any
of my patients, and certainly have no desire to invest
in it at the moment. I think it is going to be many
years before this kind of a treatment works. So, I
don't think it is a threat to SEPR.
Another reason it is not a threat is that not all
asthma is allergic or IgE dependent. There are a
number of asthmatics, maybe up to half of them, who
have no significant allergies and do not have elevated
IgE. So there still would be a market for asthma meds
even if IgE could be eliminated.
I hope this answer your question. |
