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Biotech / Medical : VD's Model Portfolio & Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vector1 who wrote (4512)	4/1/1998 4:35:00 PM
From: biowa	Respond to of 9719

V1, >>Biowa, Welcome back.<< Thanks, Biotech Bob stuck his head out of his burrow back on Feb. 2 and pronounced that there would be six more weeks (or was it months? years?) of the biotech bear market, so I went back to hibernating. Actually, I was waiting for my alter ego, !Kung, to return. (Have you ever noticed you never see Andy and me in the same place? hmmm...) >>The genomics revolution will forever change the way drugs are designed and pursued. In the past there was a dearth of targets and a dearth promising compounds. Functional genomics and the understanding of pathways is will greatly expand the number of targets. Combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening will massively increase the number of promising compounds.<< Right now, one of the big bottlenecks is developing validated targets and assays to use in HTS. There really isn't a good way to automate it. We also need ways to accelerate/"automate" tox screening and pharmacodynamics. >>The key in the future will be deciding which among many promising compounds is the one to run through expensive clinicals. This is where pharmacogenomics will play a huge role allowing pharma and biotechs to run clinical trials on patients who are genetically prescreened to make sure that the drugs mechanism of action will be both efficatious and safe for those patients.<< This should also IMHO allow smaller trial sizes, lowering cost and shortening timelines. Another key, IMO, will be streamlining the clinical process. A lot of companies, IMO, spend alot of time between clinical phases doing things that seem as if they could've been done while the trials were underway. >>Because of pharmacogenomics drugs that enter the clinic will have a high likelihood of approval.<< Caveat: However, they may also have a smaller potential market. (Wonder if anyone has ever done a study on how much money is spent on prescription meds that don't work for the particular patient) On the other hand, they may also have higher penetration of that market. >>This will change for the better the ecomomics of drug development.<< It had better, because IMHO with the decreasing time between innovations in a given indication, the time to recoup development costs is shrinking. biowa