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

To: Peter Singleton who wrote (4403)	5/29/1998 12:47:00 PM
From: billkirn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6136

Good Analysis Peter: My sense is that the asymptomatic but infected HIV patient will be encouraged to wait as long as ( some criteria ) reasonably possible before starting PI combos, unless there are compelling reasons to start. Some reasons could evolve over this next year including establishment of minimal long term side effects, viral suppression results having some other dramatic beneficial effect, etc. At this point, until some compelling long term benefit is clear, and minimal long term side effects have been established, I think the asymptomatic but infected HIV patient will hold off. That means, at this point, the market in the US will increase as HIV patients develop symptoms or their viral load increases to some critical point. This may seriously reduce market growth expectations for PIs if in fact the asymptomatic HIV population does not participate in the therapy. It would be interesting to look at earning projections for AGPH assuming that no more than 10% per year of the asymptomatic group start PI therapy and that no more that 10% of the estimated undiagnosed are diagnosed and enter the asymptomatic group. Maybe someone on the thread has a good way of estimating the impact of these assumptions. Bill

To: Peter Singleton who wrote (4403)	5/29/1998 2:31:00 PM
From: Izzy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6136

Any response to the verdict that AGPH was found guilty of "academic espionage" by stealing "potentially valuable research" from a UCSD researcher? The drug effort apparently failed and had nothing to do with the development of Viracept. "This is believed to be the first time a commercial firm was found to have misappropriated biotechnology secrets from a UCSD lab." Do you think that this is may be an industry wide issue that may apply to other biotech companies and how harmful, if any, is this jury decision on AGPH?