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

To: LoLoLoLita who wrote (3677)	4/30/1998 8:20:00 AM
From: C. K. Humphries	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 7041

If phentolamine is such a great drug for ED, then why isn't Ciba-Geigy using it? They are the major manufacturers and had tested it for ED. The people at Schering Plough are brilliant and Ciba Geigy people aren't? Maybe it is because Ciba Geigy knows that in the end it is not a good treatment and it will fail.

To: LoLoLoLita who wrote (3677)	4/30/1998 11:44:00 AM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7041

I believe the proposed dose is 40 mg of the mesylate - I don't know if that is gross or net (40 mg base equivalent - there's a 30% dose difference). My Sigma catalog (fine chemicals and biochemicals)ts phentolamine mesylate as $116 for half a gram. That's quite a bill of materials if major economies of scale are absent. And for all I know Zonagen follows the "fabless" model and will need a contractor to whip up a few kg at a time of the good stuff. I do not have any knowledge of an active ingredient other than phentolamine. I believe the tablet contains a proprietary disintegrant/dispersant to try to approach the pharmacokinetics of a glass of solution. But that's hardly a new trick. I will have to sit tight and wait for meaningful news regarding the Phase III trials and/or the NDA app.