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Biotech / Medical : Amgen Inc. (AMGN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry Niman who wrote (698)	1/3/1999 12:08:00 AM
From: Lel H	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1906

Just a few comments: From what I understand, NESP is a highly glycosylated form of Epogen. The fact that it doesn't have a different amino acid composition from the original molecule doesn't mean that it shouldn't be considered a different molecule. Glycosylation isn't a trivial addition to proteins, and differences in sugar residues is known to affect protein function. For NESP, Amgen was able to identify an effective modification of Epogen, and was able to successfully argue that it represents a distinct compound from that which it shares with Johnson & Johnson. The paper from Ariad and Jim Wilson's group is very fascinating, but it will be some time before this has any effect on Epogen. I wonder if AAV is the way to go, because of current problems generating large quantities of the virus. Still, this will be an interesting story to follow over the next several years, and this concept is broadly applicable to any number of drugs. Being personally very familiar with Wilson's work, it was good to see him associated with such an interesting application viral-mediated gene transfer. Who, if anyone, owns the rights to the erythropoieten-alfa gene/cDNA?