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Biotech / Medical : Agouron Pharmaceuticals (AGPH) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John F Beule who wrote (4061)	4/15/1998 8:34:00 PM
From: tommysdad	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6136

<<a proprietary platform for drug discovery that is apparently working>> Although there many reasons to buy AGPH (and I will exploit this drop to add to my position), a "proprietary platform for drug discovery" is not one of them. "Rational drug design" is performed almost everywhere, with variable degrees of success -- that's why, for example, there are so many protease inhibitors. Everyone is using the same crystal structure. In fact, Viracept was not made at AGPH, it was made at LLY. Of the follow-ons, AG3340 at least was not so rationally designed -- a lot of it, and certainly the breakthrough to get the clinical candidate, was good old fashioned chemical intuition and traditional medicinal chemistry. Finally, AGPH bought a combinatorial chemistry company last year -- Alanex -- certainly a very public admission of the limitations of rational drug design. In fact, Alanex technology is about the only proprietary thing AGPH has. Again, I like AGPH a lot, but don't be misled that rational drug design is either proprietary or the final word in drug discovery.