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Technology Stocks : New technology that screws up other new technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David S. who wrote (3)	1/10/1999 9:55:00 PM
From: Biomaven	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20

One of the mitigating factors in the drug industry is that even inferior drugs hang can hang on with decent sales for a surprisingly long time. Thus cimetedine (Tagamet) still had surprisingly strong sales (before it went off patent) for a long time even though it is inferior to ranitidine (Zantac). Similarly, omeprazole is still the best selling drug even though there is an essentially equivalent (and cheaper) drug available in the US. A forthcoming battle in which I have considerable interest is Sepracor's new levalbuterol, which should be released this quarter. It is unequivocally better than the existing albuterol (same or better effectiveness with half the dose, hence fewer side effects). Be interesting to see how much market share it garners over the existing name brands. I seem to recall you and I crossed swords a year or so ago about the longevity of Viracept. It's still very much going strong for now - we'll need a few years to find out just what its life is going to be. I guess my basic point is that being first on the market is worth a lot, even if the subsequent entries are demonstrably better. At worst, the original entrant can cut prices some to stay in the game. In the biomedical field it is also rare that you can demonstrate unequivocal superiority - there will usually be some metric on which you lose. Also, because you generally need very large and expensive trials to demonstrate superiority, most competing drugs show only statistical equivalence. Peter