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To: j g cordes who wrote (26487)	3/8/1999 10:46:00 PM
From: Logistics	Respond to of 120523

VVUS - Ok Girls - I know my husband would love me to have some of this . I think this stock will rock::: Monday March 8, 6:49 pm Eastern Time Vivus stock jumps after company granted patent By Mark Egan LOS ANGELES, March 8 (Reuters) - Shares of Vivus Inc., a maker of products for relieving sexual dysfunction, more than doubled on Monday amid expectations that the company could revive its flagging fortunes with a new product targeted at women. Mountain View, Calif.-based Vivus, whose stock sunk after the successful launch last year of the impotence drug Viagra, rose $2.62 to $4.81 on Monday after the company announced it had been granted a patent covering the treatment of female sexual dysfunction. The patent covers the commercialization of topical creams and gels that may be used to administer drugs and steroid hormones for the treatment of female sexual dysfunctions. ''This important patent underscores Vivus' commitment to diversify its research and development efforts within urology beyond the treatment of male erectile dysfunction,'' Chief Executive Leland Wilson said in a statement. The company's biggest to product to date, MUSE, is a pellet containing the compound alprosdil. The product was inserted into the tip of a man's penis to alleviate impotence. MUSE was well received after its introduction, with as many as 15,000 prescriptions a month being written. All that changed last March when Pfizer Inc.(NYSE:PFE - news) launched the first-ever oral pill for impotence, Viagra. The millions of prescriptions written for Viagra in its first few months on the market sounded a death knell for MUSE's growth. Prescriptions for the harder-to-take pellet have fallen to less than 4,000 a month. With its newest patent, Vivus said Monday it aimed to repackage the compound alprosdil as a cream or a gel and market it for female dysfunction. A company spokeswoman said Vivus was planning to talk with regulators about what steps it would need to take to win approval for a new product. While Vivus has proven the safety and efficacy of the drug in men, it has yet to conduct tests on women. It hopes that the tests already done on men will allow regulators to speed up the approval process and enable the company to bring a product to market within a year or two. Shares of Vivus had traded as high as $40 in late 1997 before the launch of Viagra. A year later, in October 1998, the company's shares were languishing at between $2 and $3 where they remained until Monday's announcement. Vivus's latest fourth-quarter results mirror the drop in the share price, with sales for the quarter ending Dec. 31 falling to $4.8 million from $28 million in the year-ago quarter. The stock's rise on Monday was further fueled by a study released on Friday by Columbia Presbyterian Center in New York finding that Viagra had no more of an effect in women than a dummy pill would. (Nasdaq:VVUS - news) (NYSE:PFE - news)