<the current market for biotech IPO’s has been brutal>
Maybe they should have done a reverse IPO too.
Have you slogged through the S-1? The only thing
I have read is the Competition page, which of course
is always very sobering.
" The emerging targeted medicine landscape is competitive and rapidly changing. As pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies look to improve the ways in which they develop and commercialize therapies for patients, many of them are focusing more of their resources on targeted medicine. We expect that any products that we develop will compete with other therapeutics primarily on the basis of their efficacy and safety and, to a lesser extent, on their price. We face competition from a combination of different sectors and entities within this landscape, including:
• Companies discovering, developing and commercializing targeted medicines . A number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are currently applying resources to discover, develop and commercialize targeted medicines. In some cases, these companies are bringing to market targeted medicines that were first discovered based on molecular targets and that require the use of a diagnostic prior to administration of therapy. A current example is Genentech, which successfully markets a targeted medicine for the treatment of breast cancer, Herceptin ® . In other cases, these companies have internal genetics groups that seek to identify and understand genetics markers that can be used to target their drugs and drug candidates. Examples include Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline, both of whom have publicly expressed their desire to target medicines.
• Companies using genetics to create and expand therapeutic opportunities . In addition to enabling the discovery and development of novel compounds, understanding the genetic basis of certain diseases may enable the expanded use of certain existing drugs. A current example is deCODE genetics with its lead compound in development, DG031, originally intended for the treatment of asthma and now in clinical development for the prevention of heart attack.
• Companies enabled by offerings from life sciences tool providers and biomarker discovery organizations. A number of life sciences tools companies and companies with life sciences tools divisions have, or are developing, products for genetic analysis which they make available for purchase by other companies. In particular, life sciences tools companies such as Affymetrix and Illumina, both of whom have recently announced the launch of products designed to analyze hundreds of thousands of SNPs in individual DNA samples, sell genotyping systems to a number of customers. The availability of such products allows pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to perform their own genotyping and may make them less likely to collaborate or partner with us. Many other academic and government organizations also utilize these and other tools to identify genetic variations and other biomarkers that can be used to discover or develop targeted medicines. These organizations may in turn compete with us to license their findings or otherwise partner with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Examples of organizations actively utilizing life sciences tools include the Sanger Centre, the Whitehead Institute, and GeneLogic.
• Diagnostic companies developing tests to match patients to drugs . In the diagnostic industry, we face competition in the form of commercial laboratories possessing strong distribution networks for diagnostic tests and services, companies with extensive histories and successes developing diagnostic
tests, companies with efficient platforms for performing genetic tests, as well as academic and research institutions developing or performing their own diagnostic tests. Diagnostic entities such as Roche Diagnostics and Genomic Health have already developed diagnostic tests intended to direct therapy to specific patient populations. While most of these diagnostic companies do not market their own targeted therapies, their diagnostic products are nonetheless used by patients and physicians to target therapeutic options. We expect that these companies as well as other diagnostic companies will seek to introduce many more such diagnostic tests for targeting medicine in the future.
In addition, we face intense competition from larger pharmaceutical companies and smaller or early stage public and private companies within each of the therapeutic areas our products are meant to treat, which currently include type II diabetes and dyslipidemia. In type II diabetes, we face competition from other treatments including oral treatments such as Takeda’s Actos ® and GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia ® , as well as insulin treatments such as Pfizer/ Nektar’s Exubera ® . In dyslipidemia, we face competition from other treatments including Abbott’s TriCor ® , low-cost generic fibrates, and the statin class of drugs. Moreover, new medicines may appear in the marketplace that can more effectively treat diseases than our own targeted offerings. New diagnostics may also emerge that can effectively target currently untargeted drugs, providing additional competition.
The acquisition or licensing of pharmaceutical products is very competitive, and a number of more established companies, including pharmaceutical, specialty pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies worldwide, have acknowledged strategies to license or acquire product rights. Emerging companies taking similar or different approaches to product acquisitions and targeted medicine may also compete with us to in-license attractive drug candidates."
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fwiw, Gene Logic lists Perlegen as competition
to their Drug Repositioning Division:
Currently, a number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are attempting to perform repositioning for their own candidate drugs. In addition, there are companies attempting to reposition candidate drugs on behalf of drug development partners, including Perlegen Sciences, Inc., BG Medicine, Vicus Biosciences LLC, Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. and CombinatoRX Inc. We believe our competitors’ offerings are generally based on a single, or otherwise limited, biological approach and we are not aware of any existing competitor that has developed, or is in the process of developing, a comparable suite of technologies to that employed by us. Other companies, some of whom are not doing repositioning work, have individual technologies that could directly compete with components of our drug repositioning technology platform. Certain pharmaceutical companies have begun to assemble efforts in repositioning using their own existing technologies. However, we do not know whether their existing technologies have yet been developed to enable a rapid, cost-effective approach to systematically and efficiently evaluate the broad range of biological activity of a compound, including its effect on a wide variety of diseases, without requiring a prior disease hypothesis. Because drug repositioning is a relatively new field, we compete primarily with internal research and development departments of pharmaceutical companies. |
