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Biotech / Medical : ARIAD Pharmaceuticals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Haynes who wrote (694)	9/11/1999 7:46:00 PM
From: Mike McFarland	Respond to of 4474

I am beginning my two week vacation from the Yahoo thread, as a gesture to Pirkal. I hope this olive branch will help to keep the discussion lively and intelligent in my short absence--and they've earned a reprive--some good posts of late! I very much appreciate what folks have been trying to communicate about the immunogenicity issue to the vectors--and I do think I understand the importance of inflammatory response! Keep reading. This is precisely why I think Ariad and ARGENT are a better play than chasing after the companies which have focused on vectors--it is too early to know what the best vector will be, and different vectors for different therapies anyway. ARGENT seemes like a safer play. The question for me is whether or not the big multi billion dollar market cap pharma and big biotechs companies out there are shopping around for the best vectors AND a regulation system for the protein gene therapy applications--they've got the cash and inflated stock to spend, they can do a deal to participate with ARGENT quite affordably. There are going to be spectacular successes and horrible failures with Gene Therapy. And I know there is just as much possibility for hype as dissappointment. For instance, suppose a person had little one with retinoblastoma--would you enroll your kid in some phase I and let a research scientist come at your kid with a needle? No. The whole situation would be horrible--so forget about the gene therapy, start learning all you can about Braile and such. (but Gene therapy to resore various genes associated with macular degeneration might be very successful...) Most Cancer gene therapies are not going to work, not for some years--but right now most phase I trials are Cancer. Is that really the best prospect for Gene therapy now? But on the other hand, Ariad has been involved with successful demonstrations of it's ARGENT system with monkeys and mice--I assume after a year of being little hGH factories these mice don't suddenly spontaneously combust! But that isn't the point anyway, I've never worried about vectors as much as I have been impressed with the dimerizer stuff. Now I don't know whether hGH or EPO or insulin will end up with the ARGENT system tacked on, but something is going to work--it already works! So why borrow trouble bringing up all the things that can go wrong with various vectors, the immunogenicity problem. For me it has always been about ARGENT. So, when the arguments start to heat up, and see Yahoo today, oh they will! I say, 'Take A Pill'.