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

To: Biomaven who wrote (12133)	6/21/2004 11:48:39 PM
From: tuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 52153

Peter, A few of us are finally getting around to dissecting these in the "Biotech Lock-Up Expiration Hell: Wave II" thread (y'all please excuse the cumbersome title). Help appreciated; it's time to flesh out those summer shopping lists . . . Subject 54824 Most of these have the out "too quick with a bit much cheap involvement by the VC" flavor, that the previous wave did. As such, lock-up expiration could be brutal. I'll admit I haven't looked closely at the capital structures yet, though. Mostly trying to find the promising science, or savvy inlicensings (since that's the vogue these days) and look at the business plans. Haven't delved into option grants and stockholders equity portions of the balance sheet yet. Personal frontrunners are CYTK and CGTK, because of a bias towards interesting science. Others in that category, with less convincing science, perhaps, include the much pummeled XCYT and ALNY. I find the latter a bit more compelling for their IP (but it's going to be a battle, for sure), though it's very early there. I'm vaguely aware that others have taken notice of ANDS' Hepatitis program, but haven't seen any opinions or digging. TRCA struck me as a one trick pony with a niche market. Low risk, as you say, but low reward, IMO. Can SNTS market their better mousetrap PPI by themselves? I have my doubts. Makes me think of NPS and Preos. They've chosen to go it alone for now, and the market, perhaps rightly, has punished them for it. I see parallels. Personally, I'm souring on oncology plays that don't feature small molecules. The antibodies just cost too much for too little benefit. Maybe purveyors of low cost antibody/large molecule production methods can eventually help (a private New Hampshire company working with yeast comes to mind, glycofi.com ). That's one strike against CancerVax, the other is that David Hale has yet to really have any success in the clinic that I can recall. Possible short candidate, IMO, but haven't looked closely. EYET seems way ahead of itself; I agree with Ian's take that QLTI is a more serious competitor than the market seems to think. And that all those injections have their risks, which the market will have to face up to eventually. Hence the short. Anyhow, SNTS, CYTK, and to a lesser extent, CGTK have threads with some research on them. From the BLUE HP II portfolio (while it lasts) you can hit the discussion link to get to them. Cheers, Tuck

To: Biomaven who wrote (12133)	6/22/2004 9:49:00 AM
From: tom r. phillips	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 52153

Insmed (INSM) vs. Tercica (TRCA) i own INSM and think it's less risky right now than TRCA market cap of INSM (minus cash): $58 million market cap of TRCA (" "): $143 million also, this seems to be an important competitive advantage:INSM secured manufacturing capability from Baxter in April: biz.yahoo.com and, from p.19 of TRCA's 10-Q filed 5/13/04 (mentions INSM as competition): "If another party obtains orphan drug and pediatric exclusivity for rhIGF-1 for children with IGFD, we may be precluded from commercializing rhIGF-1 in that indication. ... Although we intend to file for orphan drug designation and obtain pediatric exclusivity where appropriate, we have not yet sought pediatric exclusivity for any indication. If a competitor obtains approval of the same drug for the same indication or disease before us, we would be blocked from obtaining approval for our product for seven years, or seven and one-half years if pediatric exclusivity applies, unless our product can be shown to be clinically superior. In addition, more than one product may be approved by the FDA for the same orphan indication or disease as long as the products are different drugs. As a result, if our product is approved and receives orphan drug status, the FDA can still approve other drugs for use in treating the same indication or disease covered by our product, which could create a more competitive market for us. Our original plan was to obtain rhIGF-1 orphan drug designation for the treatment of growth hormone insensitivity syndrome, or GHIS. The Phase III clinical trial results we obtained from Genentech were for GHIS. Everywhere in this document where we discuss existing Phase III clinical trial results such results were from patients identified at the time as having GHIS. Since we now believe that Severe Pediatric IGFD, which is we believe substantially equivalent to GHIS, more accurately describes the patient population which we intend to treat with rhIGF-1, we plan to amend our current designation, but may as a result of comments from the FDA reconsider the GHIS designation, which may be a smaller patient population. We are aware of one other drug being developed by Insmed Incorporated, which we believe is a combination product containing rhIGF-1, that is in development for treatment of GHIS. This product has received an orphan drug designation from the FDA for the treatment of GHIS. The FDA could determine that this other product is the same drug as our product and is used for the same indication. If the FDA makes this determination and the other product is approved first, the approval of our rhIGF-1 for either Severe Pediatric IGFD or Pediatric IGFD could be blocked for up to seven and one-half years, which could force us to curtail or cease our operations. Even if our product is approved first, we may not be able to benefit from the orphan drug marketing exclusivity because products that are clinically superior may be approved for marketing by the FDA notwithstanding our initial approval and our initial orphan drug marketing exclusivity. " Tom