Is biotech worthwhile?

Thought provoking BusinessWeek interview with Gary Pisano about pharma/biotech dynamics, particularly saying that biotechs really don’t create value, mostly because they’re “science-based businesses., rather than businesses that do science.

In Pisano's words, the deck is stacked against start-ups as biotechs lack “the scale, the capability, and the experience across the constellation of technologies to do it effectively.” He also says that integrating all of the pieces is impossible for a start-up.

Pisano goes so far as to suggest that stand alone public biotechs will cease to exist, and that biotechs will tend to form deeper relationships but with fewer partners.

Wyeth's Torisel granted priority review

The first mTor inhibitor has been granted priority review. Approval is requested for RCC, which puts it in direct competition with Nexavar and Sutent. As Torisel is fast-tracked, performance is likely impressive and perhaps superior. I wonder if Onyx/Bayer or Pfizer is already talking to Wyeth about conducting combination trials.

14,000 LESS breast cancers incidences in 2003!!!!

This is great news! Breast cancers were reduced by 7% in a very broad sense after the use of hormone therapy was greatly reduced.

I don't think this is old news, as statistics tend to lag events by a few years, so it wasn't really , likely due to reduced

One side effect of this news: the patient population for Herceptin (Erb-b2+) will happily decline slightly. Even with the reduced incidence rate, Genentech and BMS will still have good markets for their targeted products (Herceptin and Tykerb, respectively.)

Akt1-like enzyme to boost immune response?

Per a new Nature Biotech article, scientists have re-engineered Akt1 enzyme to provoke a prolonged immune response to cancer.

This by extension suggests that inhibiting Akt1 has an immune-supressing effect, and perhaps inhibiting other genes in the Akt pathway have the same effect.

Nexavar a dud in melanoma

Best article summarizing the disappointing news that Nexavar did not meaningfully outperform the current standard of care for melanoma. Not sure if this is company spin, or not, but per the article, ONXX is locking in on anti-angiogenic uses of Nexavar, which could be a sign that Nexavar's RAF efficacy is dubious.

Other interesting item from the article: 10% of Nexavar use is off-label.

btw: I'll be out of town for a week starting tomorrow, so no posts likely in the meantime.