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Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jibacoa who wrote (2865)	2/9/2001 5:47:43 PM
From: Biomaven	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 52153

I have to say that I've been bitten a couple of times on testing companies (in my early biotech investing days) and have now learnt my lesson. Doctors don't particularly like POC tests, perhaps because of reimbursement issues, perhaps because of the hassle factor. Doctors also don't like non-traditional tests of any sort, even assuming they work well. Even when they do sell, margins for these tests are low - nothing at all like the money-printing margins you see in a good drug. One caveat- if someone does come up with a good, reliable, non-messy and non-invasive screening test for colon cancer, I guess they will do well. NMPS intermittently pops on exciting-sounding news before it goes down when their sales disappoint (which is always). Some day, I suppose, they might make good. Peter

To: Jibacoa who wrote (2865)	2/9/2001 5:51:30 PM
From: Jibacoa	Respond to of 52153

At a recent symposium sponsored by the San Antonio Cancer Institute, Dr. Marc Lippman from Georgetown Univ. presented the results of the 4 years MORE trial, which was a double-blind trial comparing raloxifene with placebo in 7,705 post-menopausal patients with osteoporosis. One outcome of that trial was that raloxifene cut breast cancer risk by 72%. Despite that favorable outcome, Dr. Lippman doesn't endorse prescribing raloxifene for brest cancer prevention.He feels that it should be reserved for the few women that can't tolerate tamoxifen. I guess we will have to way for the outcome of the STAR trial which is a head to head comparison between Lilly's Evista and Astra/Zeneca's Nolvadex for breast cancer prevention. Bernard