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

To: Hank who wrote (2879)	3/20/1998 5:39:00 PM
From: Dauntless	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7041

Hank, as an experienced industry professional What do YOU think SGP is attempting to accomplish with their Zonagen partnership. SGP outbid 4 other major pharmaceutical companies to acquire the rights to Vasomax. Prior to doing this, I'm certain that they did a great amount of due diligence. They must have had full access to all the data from all the clinical trials - patient & MD related, any work that Zonagen did, manufacturing information, etc. They undoubtedly spoke with many, if not all, of the MD's participating in the trial. Finally, they certainly examined the patent status. I assume that the folks at SGP are fairly competent, as are you. How can you be so certain that there's no potential here when they obviously came to a completely different opinion. First of all, I doubt they would do ANYTHING unless they felt secure about the patent status. Furthermore, since their initial milestone payment of $10 M, they have continued to work on the project, burning considerable dollars in preparing the NDA for filing. Why do YOU think they committed this colossal blunder by filing in Mexico before the USA?? It doesn't make any sense to me why they would continue with the whole project. If they felt that they made a mistake at the outset, why file in a foreign country?? Wouldn't they just fold up their tent to minimize their losses?? I have medical device, not pharmaceutical industry experience but this doesn't fit in any pattern of behavior for a big company that I've ever seen. Finally, what is your function at your company - science, marketing, regulatory.....?

To: Hank who wrote (2879)	3/20/1998 7:29:00 PM
From: Brander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7041

Hank, in response to your argument "Yes, but the efficacy is not necessarily the same for each individual patient" : Back to our small example of Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil, at the time these drugs were approved by the FDA, there were zero studies companring the efficacy of all three directly. There was no proof that Paxil might work better than Prozac on any given patient. All the trials and scientific studies of these drugs shows them to be equally efficacious and to have similar side effect profiles. There is very little difference between them, when you look at the literature. Now, in actual experience, one person might respond better to Paxil than Prozac, but there was no direct experience with this prior to the approval of Paxil, and there are still no studies comparing the two in this way. By the way, the same can be said for ANY medication. There is always individual differences in how a person responds to a particular medication. With any medication, a person might respond better to another one in his class.