Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: dalroi who wrote (570)	11/3/2003 9:23:34 PM
From: tuck	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3661

PTN off 20% due to high dropout rate in ED study: >>NEW YORK -- Palatin Technologies Inc. (AMEX:PTN - News) shares plunged 20% Monday after the development-stage company reported on a one-month clinical trial of its proposed treatment for erectile disfunction administered by a nose spray. Chief Executive Carl Spana said the trials of the product, its lead drug candidate, were encouraging and investors may have misunderstood elements of the report. Safety and efficacy results to date have been "extremely competitive" with alternate medications now on the market, Mr. Spana said. The company will launch a similar, three-month trial of the drug in 2004, and Palatin hopes to commercialize the drug in doses of five milligrams to 10 milligrams. At those levels, about 5% of patients discontinued the drug because of side effects. But the study, which aimed to set effective dosages, also found that at 15 milligrams to 20 milligrams, 12% of patients discontinued because of side effects. Several 1997 trials of sildenafil, the generic name for Viagra, found less than 10% of patients discontinuing because of side effects. The rate of side effects confused investors, Mr. Spana said. Investors "got spooked" by the Palatin study, which contained essentially positive news, Matthew Kaplan, biotech analyst for Punk Ziegel & Co. said. Mr. Kaplan owns shares in Palatin but doesn't cover the company for Punk, which has no investment-banking business with Palatin. Palatin aims to use marketing and manufacturing alliances with other pharmaceutical companies to produce products for sale. Palatin is also developing LeuTech, a radio-labeled monoclonal antibody for imaging and diagnosing infections, and expects final U.S. regulatory approval in the first half of 2004.<< If PTN intends to market the product at the lower doses, then I agree that there shouldn't really be a problem. The 10mg dose hit all the endpoints. Maybe this really is buying opportunity, unlike most firesales. Rick is probably the only one who has the background to comment, both because of his credentials, and the fact that he has followed the company to varying degrees, while none of the rest of us have, to my knowledge. Cheers, Tuck

To: dalroi who wrote (570)	11/5/2003 12:50:49 AM
From: Jibacoa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3661

O.T. I just talked to a source with a copy of the JAMA article mentioned below involving Esperion Therapeutics' (ESPR-Nasdaq) arterial plaque-reducing drug ETC216. And yes, the data is negative. That's not the opinion of Mathew Harper on Forbes. Steven Nissen, the Cleveland Clinic cardiologist who led the trial points out that patients received the drug for only five weeks and the 4.2% reduction they saw "is huge," according to him. When they initially designed the trial, he had estimated a 3% reduction. And that was optimistic. forbes.com BTW I stll remember the article by Cook et al. on the Am.J.of Med. many years ago about the results on rabbits with L-arginine. They were impressive enough for me to take some L-arginine along with Vitamin E ounce in a while.<g>(Especially since L-arginine is a precursor of NO or EDRF.) The article from Cook et al. if I remember correctly was from Stanford. A more recent one from Harvard by Girerd (I don't know if the Cook collaborator is the same.<g>)seems to also show that exogenous L-arginine normalizes the endothelium-dependent vasodilation of hind limb resistance vessels in cholesterol-fed rabbits.(Hypercholesterolemia is known to reverse the acetylcholine vasodilation.) ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Bernard