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Biotech / Medical : Biotechnology & Drugs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (211)	11/25/2003 10:02:08 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 232

Yet just days before --->UPDATE - Early Genentech, Idec cancer drug data lackluster Tuesday November 4, 7:12 pm ET By Deena Beasley (Adds details, company comments, byline) LOS ANGELES, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Early data fail to show that Rituxan, a cancer drug sold by Genentech Inc. and Idec Pharmaceuticals Inc., helps survival when given as a maintenance therapy to patients with aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, analysts said on Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT Genentech, the world's No. 2 biotech company, said the study results are not yet mature and other studies show that follow-on treatment with Rituxan does help patients with indolent lymphoma, the term used to describe lymphomas that are slower growing with fewer symptoms. The preliminary data was posted on the Web by the American Society of Hematology, which will hold its annual meeting early next month in San Diego. At that time, updated research results are expected to be presented. The study, conducted by the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group, compares use of chemotherapy alone to chemotherapy plus Rituxan in 632 patients with aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. Preliminary results show no advantage for Rituxan in survival and only a slight, not statistically significant, advantage in "time to treatment failure," U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Mark Schoenebaum said in a report. In addition, Rituxan as a maintenance therapy only benefited patients who were not initially treated with the drug, the analyst said. While we are encouraged by the preliminary data on time to treatment failure ... we believe that the maintenance information is currently immature and require more clinical events in patients to be available for analysts to fully understand the results," Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Genentech's chief medical officer, said in a statement. On a conference call, Ian Clark, the company's general manager, biooncology, said Genentech believes that the indolent segment is the most important marketplace for Rituxan, "simply because these patients do live longer." He also said Rituxan is already being used in about 80 percent of patients with aggressive lymphoma. "In the indolent setting patients live for a long time so it is important to keep them in remission ... In aggressive lymphoma the goal is to cure patients," Desmond-Hellmann said. "We have to wait and see that data."<font size=4> "Analysts expect Rituxan sales to total around $1.3 billion this year. Schoenebaum said the unimpressive data on aggressive lymphoma is not expected to change Rituxan usage. "While there had been expectations on the Street that the maintenance data may support increased use in maintenance therapy, we do not believe that the data are strong enough to support this expectation," the analyst said. Goldman Sachs analyst May-Kin Ho said in a report that, if the eventual data are negative for maintenance, eventual peak sales of Rituxan in the United States might be lowered to between $2 billion and $2.5 billion from $3 billion. Idec (NasdaqNM:IDPH - News) shares fell $1.94, or 5.5 percent, to close at $33.26 on Nasdaq, while Genentech (NYSE:DNA - News) shares rose $1.00, or 1.2 percent, to close at $82.00 on the New York Stock Exchange (News - Websites) .