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Biotech / Medical : Sepracor-Looks very promising -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pseudo Biologist who wrote (2558)	4/28/1999 1:39:00 PM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 10280

Thanks a bunch. The report did not mention the company name, and I was hoping somone would pop up here with the info. I knew it was costly, but the injection part is an even bigger bugaboo. Tom

To: Pseudo Biologist who wrote (2558)	4/28/1999 1:49:00 PM
From: Don Miller	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10280

The IGE Blocker prospect was why I was trying to get asthma and allergy physicians to have a private exchange. I did not want to ignite the shorts. I have managed to get one to reply. Below is what I said to them, and below that is asthmadoc99's reply. By the way, the phase III test required only one injection per month, so injections can not be a bad issue. Bottom line the one reply I got said my drug of concern is a non-starter. Our exchange went as follows: Thanks for the reply Doc. I am a 52 year old chemical engineer by training, so biochemistry is not my strong point. Isomers I understand. Last fall and again this spring NBC nightline ran a piece on an IGE blocker test coming out of Phase III tests in June. AMGN and Novartis are co-sponsoring a drug developed by Tanox. I have allergies, some of which can not be desensitized such a mite dust. If I understand it correctly, this IGE blocker sounds like a silver bullet for all allergies, even food allergies. If this drug is for real it could be a serious threat to the allergy and asthma symptom treatment portion of the SEPR pipeline. These drugs represent a significant portion of the potential for SEPR so I am worried about my SEPR investment potential. (ie the reason for this off track exchange) Have you seen evidence or mention of the potential of this Tanox drug yet? What is you feeling on an IGE blocker? One of the issues as I understand it, is it could be so powerful that it might shutdown the entire auto-imune(sp?) system. Have you heard of any similar comprehensive prevention drugs in testing that block IGE or perform similarly, if so what drugs and who is the maker? As far as investing, Tanox is a private company, for which you need $1MM networth or successive years of $300,000 income to talk about buying stock. They have no intent to go public, as of a couple of months ago. Their link is tanox.com From: asthmadoc Your question is a very good one. I am not participating in any of the anti-IgE studies, but I do know of some specialists who are. From what I have heard and read, it is not looking very promising so far. It sounds like it is not very effective. Even more so, the drug does not seem to last long in the bloodstream. The way it works is that the anti-IgE drug combines with IgE in the blood, and then the complexes are removed by the body. However, some of the trials have shown that the body just produces more and more IgE, so the effects of the drug are overcome. This could then potentially be dangerous, since there would be a number of immune complexes floating around that could cause disease. Another potential problem is that the body could develop antibodies to the drug itself, so the patient might start having reactions to the shots after a couple of months. I think that this drug is not going to work very well, and the researchers will have to go back to the drawing boards. I am not recommending anti-IgE to any of my patients, and certainly have no desire to invest in it at the moment. I think it is going to be many years before this kind of a treatment works. So, I don't think it is a threat to SEPR. Another reason it is not a threat is that not all asthma is allergic or IgE dependent. There are a number of asthmatics, maybe up to half of them, who have no significant allergies and do not have elevated IgE. So there still would be a market for asthma meds even if IgE could be eliminated. I hope this answer your question.