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Biotech / Medical : MGI Pharma MOGN New patents, anti cancer -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vector1 who wrote (729)	2/23/1998 9:22:00 AM
From: Biomaven	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1826

V1: Thanks for the reference - I'll get hold of it and see whether it serves to temper my optimism on MGI-114. Trying to rationally value 114 at this point is probably a hopeless task, but it might be worth trying anyway. So here are my _guesses_ at some relevant current probabilities: Probability of a European deal that substantially pays for Phase II: 75% Probability that we make it into multiple Phase II's (with or without a European deal): 90% Probability that we then make it into a Phase III: 50% (45% cumulative) (There would likely then be a US licensing deal prior to this point). Probability then of a successful Phase III and approval: 50% (22.5% cumulative) Probability then that it's a blockbuster: 10% (about 2% cumulative) Any better informed guesses from you or other people on the thread? If this isn't a silly process, we could then try to estimate likely stock prices associated with each of these outcomes. Peter

To: Vector1 who wrote (729)	2/23/1998 12:46:00 PM
From: seminole	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1826

Vector1 Thanks for the reference. The mouse model also concerns me. I am a chemist and I hate animal studies, but they provide important information on the type of tumors the drug inhibits, sites of drug accumulation, and dose. Nothing is more important than Phase II. richard

To: Vector1 who wrote (729)	2/28/1998 4:38:00 PM
From: Biomaven	Respond to of 1826

V1, <<Among the primary reasons [for failure of xenograft models] are toxicity and the fact that Xenografted human tumors are not metastatic. There was an excellent article on this issue in the november 7th issue of Science entitled Cancer Models: Systems for identifying new drugs are often faulty. >> I've now had a chance to read this article. Here are some cautionary quotes from it: "But the results with xenograft screening turned out to be not much better than those obtained with the original model [mouse tumors], mainly because the xenograft tumors don't behave like naturally occurring tumors in humans - they don't spread to other tissues for example. Thus drugs tested in xenografts appeared effective but worked poorly in humans. 'We had basically discovered compounds that were good mouse drugs rather than good human drugs' ..." The article states that since 1955, "many thousands of drugs" have shown activity in either cell or animal models" but only 39 drugs are approved exclusively for chemotherapy. The article also makes the point that existing approved cancer drugs often also fail in the xenograft models. ----------------- The article is written very much from the screening perspective. Thus I'm not sure to what extent its conclusions apply to a drug like MGI-114 that has shown dramatic results in many different xenograft models. In favor of MGI-114, also, is that it worked in a metastatic xenograft model (MV522), which many existing cancer drugs failed at. Here's the reference, which has been quoted on this thread before: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and here's another on MV522: Nonresponsiveness of the metastatic human lung carcinoma MV522 xenograft to conventional anticancer agents. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov My bottom line: We're going to have to wait for Phase II. A complete bomb is still very much possible, but then so is a jackpot. Peter