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Biotech / Medical : ICOS Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lel H who wrote (639)	3/23/1999 6:27:00 PM
From: limit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1139

Lel, Ran across this on Bloomberg Icos Rises Amid Hopes for Prospects of Viagra Rival (Update1) Icos Rises Amid Hopes for Prospects of Viagra Rival (Update1) (Closing shares.) Bothell, Washington, March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Shares in Icos Corp., a biotech company whose biggest shareholder is Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, rose 11 percent amid hopes for the success of an experimental impotence drug it's developing. Icos rose 3 11/16 to 37 in trading of 2.3 million shares, more than seven times the three-month daily average. Earlier, it reached a record high of 38 1/8. Icos will present data next month at a medical meeting in Stockholm on its impotence treatment, which could compete with Pfizer Inc.'s blockbuster impotence pill Viagra. While the results are only from the second of three phases of testing needed to get regulatory approval for the product, investors are hoping that the drug being developed by Icos and drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co. will prove to have fewer side effects than Viagra. ''In an immature market like the one for impotence drugs, swings in market share can be big,'' said Sergio Traversa, an analyst with Mehta Partners. ''If they've got a small advantage, the drug may have definitely have a rapid uptake and grab significant market share.'' Investigators will discuss data from Phase II trials of the ICOS drug, which is dubbed IC351, at the April 7 to 11 meeting of the European Urology Association in Stockholm, said Icos spokeswoman Lacy Fitzpatrick. 'Significant Improvement' Icos released preliminary data from that trial in September. The company said the 44-patient overseas study found that men who received the drug had ''significant improvement'' in their ability to achieve an erection over men treated with a placebo. On Thursday, the AFX financial wire service reported that French urologist Albert Leriche said that IC351 could win approval within a year or two. He also said the drug can enable users to achieve an erection for a 24-hour period, far longer than Viagra. It's too early to comment on the duration of the drug's effect because the company has yet to determine correct dosage, Fitzpatrick said. Icos and Lilly hope to begin Phase III trials of the drug by the end of this year. The Icos drug appears to be the only strong threat to Viagra, which quickly became a part of pop culture following its April 1998 introduction, thanks to record-breaking demand for the drug, said Traversa, who has a ''buy'' recommendation on Icos shares. IC351 was specifically designed to cause an erection, which means it's less likely to have unexpected side effects, Traversa said. ''You would be able to have the same efficacy at lower doses. It should have a better side effect profile than Viagra,'' he said. Icos was founded in 1990 by George Rathmann, a co-founder of Amgen Inc., the world's biggest biotechnology firm. Other Directors Besides Gates, other directors at Icos include Walter Wriston, former CEO of Citicorp; Frank Cary, former CEO of International Business Machines Corp.; and James Ferguson, former CEO of General Foods Corp. AmeriCal Securities analyst Charles Engelberg said that all- star lineup has made Icos shares more attractive than merited by its pipeline of drug candidates, none of which has approval. ''All the tech players want to do biotech and they buy this one because Bill Gates owns it,'' Engelberg said. ''Just look at the ($1.5 billion) market cap. It's just crazy considering that we don't know that anything they have will become a drug.''