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Biotech / Medical : OSI Pharmaceuticals (OSIP) - formerly Oncogene -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Miljenko Zuanic who wrote (324)	12/8/2005 7:17:41 PM
From: DewDiligence_on_SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 447

Wasn't you sceptical about Avastin [in AMD] few weeks back? I still am. When the only other choices are Macugen and Visudyne, it’s natural for ophthalmologists to want to try something better—even something that has little hard data to back it up. After all, Macugen and Visudyne are marginal drugs, and merely stabilizing a patient who already has bad vision is not an appealing option. However, I expect that the motivation for docs to try off-label Avastin will diminish drastically once Lucentis is approved for all forms of wet AMD and is reimbursed by Medicare and the major private payers. What will be the incentive for docs to fool around with an unapproved and potentially risky use of Avastin when there is no evidence that Avastin will work any better than Lucentis? The money they will save by splitting up vials of Avastin will mostly be ours (i.e. taxpayers’), not theirs or their patients’.