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Biotech / Medical : Celltech Group (NYSE: CLL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: keokalani'nui who wrote (62)	4/26/2003 3:00:40 PM
From: nigel bates	Respond to of 123

More comment (I saw elsewhere that the PDE-4 programme was pencilled in at £100m value, which is in the same ballpark): Celltech suffers second drug setback in under year By Ben Hirschler and Mark Potter LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) - Shares in Celltech Group Plc fell as much as 15 percent on Friday after Britain's biggest biotech firm unveiled its second big drug setback in less than a year. Celltech (LSE: CCH.L - news - msgs) said its U.S. partner, Merck & Co , had decided to stop developing an experimental lung drug licensed from the British firm after a patient developed colitis, an inflammation of the colon, in a Phase II clinical trial. "It's a significant setback for the group (Celltech)," said Sally Bennett, an analyst at ING Financial Markets, who put her financial forecasts and "buy" investment rating on Celltech shares under review. At 1500 GMT, the shares were 29 pence, or 9.7 percent, lower at 270-1/4p, valuing Celltech at around 746 million pounds ($1.2 billion). ING's Bennett had considered the asthma drug worth around 25 pence to Celltech's share price. While only 10 percent of her total estimate of the firm's drug pipeline, it was the only project on which she had put a value apart from Celltech's biggest new drug hope, CDP870 for rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease. "It (the setback) increases the risk profile of the company significantly," she said. The decision by Merck also comes less than a year after Celltech revealed a bowel drug it had been developing with Biogen Inc had flopped in clinical trials. "Their number two product's gone down. It's clearly not good news," said Peter Cartwright, an industry analyst at Williams de Broe. BRAVE FACE Celltech Finance Director Peter Allen put a brave face on the blow. "It's a very precautionary step that they've (Merck) taken. They saw a single adverse event of colitis, which reversed itself when treatment stopped," he told Reuters. The decision did not mean other compounds in the same drug class would not be successfully developed by Merck and Celltech in future, he added, though new compounds are likely to take years to develop. Merck will continue its research in the field of asthma and pulmonary disease through the study of other molecules in the same class, known as Phosphodiesterase-4 inhibitors. "We don't think it really throws any doubt over this class of drug, because Pharmacia and Altana have a PDE-4 programme, which has been in Phase III trials successfully," Allen said. The asthma drug setback comes only a week after Celltech ended a 10-month search for a new Chief Executive by appointing Goran Ando, the former head research at Pharmacia Corp. The firm also recently beat of rivals to win the bidding war for Oxford GlycoSciences Plc (LSE: OGS.L - news) and get its hands on that company's big cash pile. ING's Bennett said many investors had been looking for positive news on the asthma drug as confirmation Celltech was on the road to recovery. Instead analysts will have to remove from their forecasts the big milestone payment Celltech was expected to get when Merck took the drug into final Phase III trials, she said...