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Biotech / Medical : Sepracor-Looks very promising -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Miller who wrote (3832)	10/27/1999 5:25:00 PM
From: Biomaven	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10280

My guess is it's not regulatory issues causing SGP to keep very quiet here, it's competitive issues. Biotechs need to keep blowing their horn and disclosing anything and everything because they are so dependent on their "story" to keep them going through long years of losses. Big Pharma, on the other hand, cares more about present and future sales and their credibility. Even assuming that the studies showed that Claritin II has substantial advantages over Claritin, it would clearly not be in SGP's interest to publicize them at this stage. Talking about "more rapid onset of action" just draws attention to the slower onset of action of their present version. Further, given that their eventual label for Claritin II may not reflect all the advantages that they currently believe the new version may have, they potentially end up looking stupid if they trumpet the advantages now. From their perspective, there will be plenty of time to talk about the advantages after they have their label and they want to introduce the drug. I'm not saying they won't murmur nice things in their analysts' ears about Claritin II ahead of then, of course. They are playing a very high stakes game here, with their dominant product going off patent and their improved version only just in the wings. Peter