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Biotech / Medical : ViroLogic (VLGC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (16)	8/28/2000 10:35:11 PM
From: Ian@SI	Respond to of 59

Astonishing growth during the next couple years is anticipated. Perhaps this story was a contributor to VLGC's powerful growth during the past couple trading days. ++++++++++++++++++++ Hello: Thought you might be interested in reading a story on ViroLogic that appeared last Friday (8/25) in the San Francisco Business Times.... There is one error - they report that the PhenoSense Select panel only includes 5 antiretrovirals, instead of 12. We will have that corrected. ----------------------------------- San Francisco Business Times ViroLogic Expands to Meet Demand for Its HIV Tests By Brendan Doherty ViroLogic, a South San Francisco-based medical testing company, is expanding to triple its capacity by the end of this year and double again by the end of 2001. ViroLogic signed leases for a total of 94,000 square feet in two buildings at 341-343 Oyster Point Boulevard in South San Francisco. In addition, the company may keep its 25,000-square-foot existing facility, and hire 30 employees, pushing the total to 160. The expansion is part of an aggressive campaign to meet the growing demand for its viral testing group called PhenoSense HIV. The first building will be completed in October and will allow ViroLogic to expand from 100 tests per day to 300. "We want to be able to increase our output to meet the demand," said William Young, CEO and president of ViroLogic. "We absolutely have to keep the capacity ahead of the demand." New diagnostic tool PhenoSense HIV is a phenotypic battery of tests that determine a patient's receptivity -- or the disease's resistance -- for certain HIV-fighting drugs. PhenoSense measures how well these often-expensive drugs can work for patients, with results turned around within two weeks. The testing gives doctors a new diagnostic tool to help determine when a patient's drug regimen should be changed, and which drugs will work. Currently, 14 drugs are available to doctors to prescribe for HIV. "From the research that we've done, phenotyping, or matching the patient to the drug, is the technology that people are beginning to adopt in treatment," says Matt Gellar, managing director, equity research, CIBC Oppenheimer. "We think this company is a leader in this and will reap the benefits of both expansion and an increasing need for this type of patient-specific drug tailoring." According to Gellar, 1 million people in the United States are infected with HIV, 33 million worldwide. Gellar believes that the USFDA will begin to recommend phenotype testing as a screening for its pharmaceutical approval process. PhenoSense HIV, launched in November, has propelled ViroLogic's growth. Sales of the battery of tests in the first two quarters of the year doubled. First-quarter 2000 sales revenue for ViroLogic were $900,000; for the second quarter, $1.9 million. Costs to patients range from a battery testing the five most popular drugs for $775 to one testing all available drugs for $955. Developing new tests ViroLogic hopes the new facility expansion will also give the company room to develop similar testing batteries for Hepatitis B and C. We are hard at work on expanding to other diseases," says Young. A former chief operating officer at biotech-giant Genentech, Young came aboard the company in November of 1999. Not coincidentally, ViroLogic was founded four years ago by two other Genentech refugees -- scientist Dan Capon and patent attorney Martin Goldstein. Capon has since left ViroLogic. In addition to PhenoSense, ViroLogic performs phenomic testing and screening of new compounds for pharmaceuticals. Their client list includes Merck, Gilead, BMS and Abbott. The company launched its IPO in May of this year, raising $35 million. Its stock, traded on the Nasdaq, is currently at twice its IPO offering of $7. The dream is about tailoring drugs to the patient," says Young. ViroLogic licenses part of its technology from Roche Molecular Systems in a non-exclusive, life-of-patent deal. One other company, Belgium-based Virco, sells phenotypic tests. ViroLogic and two other companies, including Foster City-based Applied Biosystems and Toronto-based Visible Genetics, make similar, less-expensive and less-exact genotyping HIV resistance tests.