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

To: Vector1 who wrote (4604)	10/21/2000 7:22:42 AM
From: hm	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10280

A few comments to add to the excellent discussion. It takes time to kill a high profile program like the Prozac isomer. There is data to interpret, clinical safety assessments to be made, drug development & commercial implications to be understood... and lots of senior people at Lilly to agree to decisions & kill the program. Further, it's unlikely a co-incidence that the no-go decision was announced the day Lilly reported earnings. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Lilly had been analyzing the situation for several weeks prior to the announcement. If I was a Lilly shareholder, I would want them to have thought it over in detail. How much SEPR knew & when is a different issue. They were partners in the program so even if they didn't know that Lilly was actually going to kill the drug, SEPR might have known about the safety issues. I'm not into conspiracy theories so I'll leave it there. As to why to kill the program - I agree that it's a commercialization issue. They probably were pushing the dose to see if they could get better efficacy in order to differentiate the isomer from generic. The QTc interval problem punctures the safety message. And they may not have had clearly better efficacy at the lower doses. So no significant safety or efficacy advantage, lots of competition, generic Prozac, Lilly's 2 other depression programs >> it becomes inevitable that Lilly would terminate the program. However, IMO, they still probably took their time to make the decision. my 2 cents hm