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Biotech / Medical : Zonagen (zona) - good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hank who wrote (7028)	1/28/2000 4:01:00 PM
From: Bob Trocchi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7041

hank... I have reproduced an article from the last issue of Forbes. I believe it is article like this which give companies like ZONAGEN some pop. I have successfully shorted ZONA twice and I had stopped looking at it until I saw the article. I would not be surprised to see it go up further on the comments and implications that may be drawn from the article. I currently have no position but I would not short it right now. Here's hoping it goes to 15! Bob T. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Pfizer's instant success with an impotence pill is attracting competitors. Good news for patients, not so good for Pfizer shareholders. Viagra Falls By Alexandra Alger VIAGRA TOOK OFF FASTER THAN any drug before it when it debuted in April 1998, racking up 3 million prescriptions in the first three months. In 1999 the drug had worldwide sales of $1 billion. But Viagra is vulnerable, and a slew of new rivals will challenge it in the next few years. Viagra doesn't work for at least a third of the men who try it. It can take an hour to kick in, even two hours if taken after a meal (so much for romantic dinners). The side effects, though mild, can be a turn-off: headaches, flushing, indigestion and, more rarely, a bluish haze in vision. Worst of all, Viagra can lead to death if taken by patients who are on nitrates or nitroglycerin, drugs used to treat some 3 million men with heart problems, many of whom also have erectile dysfunction. Even cardiac patients not on nitrate drugs can risk a heart attack on Viagra if they have sex and are badly out of shape. Some 700 men have died after taking Viagra, about half from heart attacks and the like, the Food & Drug Administration says. While the FDA says the numbers aren't alarming given Viagra's large patient base, such reports are enough to scare away some users. A huge market awaits. Pfizer says 6 million men in the U.S. have tried Viagra, and perhaps 4 million are regular users. But up to 30 million men age 40 or older have some degree of erectile dysfunction, the National Institutes of Health says. That's more than half of men in that age group. A similar market beckons overseas. Rivals figure at least another billion dollars in sales will be up for grabs. "Viagra's a good drug, but it's not for everybody," says John Seely, research vice president at TAP Pharmaceuticals, a joint venture of Abbott Laboratories and Japan's Takeda. "There's a very large, unserved market out there." TAP hopes to offer the first Viagra challenger. Its compound, Uprima, should win clearance from the FDA by July. Vasomax, from Zonagen and Schering-Plough, may follow next year. Eight other treatments, from new pills to topical creams, are in human trials, including a drug from Bayer and one from partners ICOS Corp. and Eli Lilly. Pfizer, for its part, is working on a faster-acting Viagra wafer, though nothing is imminent. The drugmaker also is testing Viagra in women, and it has a chemical in the same class as Viagra in small trials in England. Pfizer is pouring a small fortune into marketing. It spent more than $50 million in the first half of 1999 advertising Viagra to consumers, one of the biggest ad budgets in the drug business, says IMS Health. Who hasn't seen Bob Dole in Pfizer ads, talking about erectile dysfunction? Pfizer's salesmen made close to 700,000 visits last year to doctors to push the medication.