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Biotech / Medical : Zonagen (zona) - good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BDR who wrote (1330)	12/28/1997 9:52:00 PM
From: Bruce Rosen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7041

Dale, on Friday morning, you posted the following: <<From slide #6- nearly 25% of "impotent" men had intercourse/orgasm on placebo. I will have to do some research to see if the same placebo effect has been seen with other agents, otherwise selection of patients is called into question. Second point from that slide- 40mg and 80mg doses improved the response rate to about 45%, about 20% more than placebo alone. So, better than placebo but not overwhelming. MUSE reported something like 67% in the trials but in actual practice it is perhaps 50%. If Vasomax experiences a similar decline in effectiveness in actual use the patient might as well take a sugar pill, is that the message? Longs, help me out. Make your case.>> From what I have seen of the mild to moderate ED sector which Vasomax, Viagra and Muse are trying to address, placebo rates do run high. To its credit, Zonagen screened out many of the potential placebo responders. The difference of 25% response for placebo vs. the 45% for Vasomax is an approximately 80% improvement over placebo for Vasomax. If these numbers are valid, and there is not a massive fraud being perpetrated by many people and companies, these numbers are easily approvable. Zonagen is not predicting a 45% market share. They estimate their share at between 15% and 30%. As Dauntless pointed out, even a lower market share makes Vasomax a powerful revenue source for a small company like Zonagen. As for sugar pills; since those men responding to a placebo won't know whether they are among those who are actually responding to placebo or Vasomax(or Viagra for that matter), chances are they will continue to take the pill which they believe helps them. Placebo responses are a fact of life in the pharmaceutical business. The most important point about Zonagen's Phase III results is that they showed significant improvement over placebo for its primary and secondary endpoints. This was looked at very closely by Schering-Plough before the marketing agreement was signed and $10 million dollars was paid to Zonagen, with $47.5 million to follow.