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POPSBiotech Buzz Kills Adam Feuerstein over at TheStreet.com always has smart things to say about biotech stocks. In his column today, he makes both Onyxx, which has a big-selling cancer drug, and Exelixis, which is testing cancer drugs, sound very risky. With the markets a mess, it's hard to see how the extremely risky world of cash-hungry biotechs is going to appeal to investors.
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POPSGFP Researchers Win Nobel Prize Osamu Shimomura (pictured), Martin Chalfie, and Roger Tsien won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on green flourescent protein, a tool that has become ubiquitous in modern biology as a tag and molecular highlighter, vastly improving our ability to understand what goes on inside cells. I wrote about the discovery of GFP back in 2001. Click on the link to see my story, Biotech's Glowing Breakthrough.
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POPSOuch. From $7 to 70 cents in a year. That's biotech. If Synavive does really have pain-killing properties, CombinatoRx execs might want to take some themselves.
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POPSThe Latest Conflicted Researcher Sen. Charles Grassley has been digging up a lot of these. Gardiner Harris at NYT really manages to pull out some of the larger trends at work, especially toward the end of this piece.
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POPSMerck Cancels Obesity Drug Probably the right move. Why throw good money after bad. I will be interesting to see what Pfizer decides for its similar compound.
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POPSIcahn Responds To Cornelius What's amazing about ImClone's press release is the way it encourages looking at the personalities of the two dealmakers-- ImClone chairman Carl Icahn and Bristol chief Jim Cornelius -- over and above the two companies that are actually involved in the merger deal.
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POPSTheStreet.com: Homeland Security Requires Gardasil Shots For Immigrants TheStreet.com has a really nice piece about a rather strange decision by the Department of Homeland Security to require immigrants to get a Gardasil shot -- although not the complete course required for full immunity. In the story, Gardasil maker Merck says it is not aware of the department's policies. Click the link for more.
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POPSImClone's Mystery Suitor The biotech not only rejects the bid from Bristol-Myers Squibb, but claims another company is interested in paying more.
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POPSWill Pfizer Buy Bayer? A Pfizer-Bayer deal is the unsubstantiated market rumor of the day. There are reasons to doubt the rumors. Pfizer's previous mega-deals haven't exactly paid off. And buying a European drug firm isn't exactly appealing given the current state of the dollar. But one stumbling block listed by Reuters, that Bayer is a healthcare-chemicals conglomerate, not just a drug company, doesn't seem that big a deal for me. In fact, Pfizer might be excited to get Bayer's diagnostics business. Being a mix of medical devices, diagnostics, and drugs has worked pretty well for Abbott Laboratories and Johnson & Johnson, after all.
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POPSA Win For Regeneron Regeneron's had a good run lately. Analysts at Needham & Co., who say the stock's a buy, write, that the data support a phase 3 program in gout.
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POPSPfizer and Medivation Enter Deal On Alzheimer's Pfizer will partner with the small biotech firm on dimebon, an experimental drug for Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease. But there is debate among investors over whether early, promising results from studies in Russia will translate into effectiveness in larger clinical trials. Pfizer will pay $225 up front and $500 million in bio-bucks. It will pay for 60% of development costs and get 60% of profits.
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POPSAnother Blow For Cancer Vaccines An independent committee stops a study of Cell Genesys' GVAX because more patients died with the therapy than without. Cell Genesys shares drop below $1. This is yet another blow to a field that has been beset by trouble. Still in the game: the controversial Dendreon, with another ongoing study in prostate cancer, and GlaxoSmithKline, which has a huge cancer immunotherapy effort.
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POPSBigfoot Is 96% Possum But that's not the great part. I mean, a half-human, half-ape, or, less crudely, some kind of australopithacine, would be a momentous discovery, of course. But a half human, half possum? That's comic book territory.
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POPSGilead Drug Approved Viread gets approved for hepatitis B on its PDUFA date. A nice win for Gilead. For investors, the big questions about the company come down to valuation. Most analysts love the company; doubters just think shares are overpriced.
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POPSBristoClone: The Game Begins In Earnest Not a surprise: ImClone says Bristol's bid is too low. Surprise: Icahn says the bid may have been inspired by Bristol's knowledge of discussions already under way to split ImClone into two companies.
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POPSIcahn Wins? Bristol Bids For ImClone The market is already valuing ImClone at above the offer price. But why would the bid price go up? Who would want to own a share of a drug that Bristol already essentially controls?
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POPSD-Mab Does It Amgen's osteoporosis drug met its goals, and serious infections may be less of a problem than expected. But the devil will be in the details -- it's hard to gauge the potential for the drug without more information on safety and efficacy. This is a medicine that will compete with long-marketed drugs and cheap generics. Still, this is good news for Amgen, which is why the stock is up 15% in after-hours trading. Quotes from the press release are below; click the link to read the whole thing.
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POPSBristol/Lilly: The Battle Begins Fighting words. Effient is supposed to be a new-and-improved Plavix; Plavix is the second-best seller in the drug industry, used to prevent heart attacks by keeping blood from clotting.
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POPSNissen & Califf On Avandia, Last Year Googling around for information on meta-analysis, I came across this great conversation between two of the world's top cardiologists, Steven Nissen and Robert Califf, about Avandia, from a year ago. It's a great read.
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POPSWhere Doctors Get Information According to doctors, according to a survey conducted by the drug industry's trade group that Ed Silverman at Pharmalot.com wrote about this morning. One interpretation is that sales reps aren't that influential. The drug industry trade group, PhRMA, is going with that approach. The other interpretation is that doctors don't realize the influence visits with drug industry sales representatives have on them. There's no way this survey could tell the difference.
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POPSAcross The Atlantic Europe approves Merck's niacin/flush-blocker combo pill, called Tredaptive. The U.S. brand name was meant to be Cordaptive, but Merck has told Wall Street the U.S. Food and Drug Administration wants a lot more data, delaying re-submission as much as five years. It would be interesting to know why European and U.S. regulators don't see eye-to-eye, but unfortunately the regulatory process is pretty opaque. And everybody is left guessing.
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POPSFDA Nixes "Approvable" Letters This could make the world less confusing -- "approvable letters" and "nonapprovable letters" both mean "we're not approving this drug." But it could also mean less info for investors -- the two types of letters were at least a way of communicating how forcefully the FDA was saying "No." It will be interesting to watch how this develops.
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POPSThe NYT On Avastin The New York Times has a long takeout in the Sunday paper on the conundrum raised by Genentech's Avastin: How much can society afford to pay for a treatment that, while beneficial, only extends median survival by a little bit? An interesting bit of new information comes out in between the analysis and stirring narrative. Genentech and Roche have spent more than $2.25 billion to develop Avastin. That's an interesting figure -- about as much as the drug made in sales last year. It does serve as a reminder that it is drug companies, not the government, that really pay for developing new medicines. What makes the Avastin conundrum difficult is that it is one of the biggest sellers introduced in recent memory. If Avastin's not worth the money, there are some hard questions that need to be asked about the incentives currently at work in drug development.
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