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Biotech / Medical : Ligand (LGND) Breakout! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cheryl Galt who wrote (30122)	1/11/2000 1:28:00 PM
From: medsunman	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 32384

Henry, Cheryl, Texas Dude, et. al. I attended the LGND presentation this morning and the breakout session which followed. Robinson explained that LGND has a two-profit center strategy: (1) Ligand's Specialty Oncology Products; and (2) Ligand's Corporate Partner Products. Within the first (LSOP), the two most important products "for the next five years" are Targretin and Ontak. Both will "move rapidly outside the T-cell lymphoma market to the B-cell lymphoma market - with Targretin moving to breast cancer and psoriasis and beyond." Ontak will be expanded to B-cell lymphoma, which is a market 20-30 times larger than the CTCL market. During the period 2000-2001, LGND will also publish data on Ontak for psoriasis. In the presentation, I was puzzled by the fact that Robinson didn't say much if anything about Targretin being expanded to breast cancer. He mentioned the possibility, but when he presented a slide on Targretin, it mentioned that during the 2000-2001 timeframe, LGND would complete and publish Phase II results with psoriasis, and launch Phase IV combination trials with other currently marketed drugs -- but the slide omitted any reference to publishing the Phase II ABC data. In the breakout session, I asked him about this. I am not that familiar with the design of the Phase II ABC trial, but what I understood him to say was this. The trial was designed with three arms. The first two were fully enrolled and are complete (or nearly complete). In the third arm, however, LGND was slow in getting it fully enrolled, and therefore it is not complete. (I'm not sure how the third cohort differs from the other two - perhaps the third group is targretin given in combo with tamoxifen - maybe one of you could look into this, Cheryl?). He said that LGND wouldn't release data until the trial (all three arms) were complete. They will have data on all three groups "by mid-year". Lilly will go into the clinic with the "second generation" drug for diabetes early next year. This compound does not elevate triglycerides as did Targretin - that has been "dialed out of the drug - in fact it "lowers triglycerides". Formal development decision on this drug will involve a substantial milestone payment, which has not yet been announced. More later...