Hello Tykerb, goodbye Blog-X!

Congrats to GSK for the approval of Tykerb, another kinase targeting blockbuster, with predictions of up to $2.5B in peak sales. While some have undersold Tykerb as a late-comer to the HER-2+ market that Herceptin already dominates, this approval is important for additional reasons:

-Tykerb represents the first direct competition between a small-molecule (Tykerb) and an antibody (Herceptin). (If you're thinking Sutent & Nexavar vs. Avastin, remember that Sutent and Nexavar target the VEGF receptor, not VEGF itself.) Who wouldn't rather pop a pill versus receive a transfusion? It's not that simple, though, as transfusions increase patient compliance, which is a huge problem in the pharma world.

-Tykerb is priced about 10% less than Herceptin. We're entering a new phase of the evolution of targeted drugs, where price is a dimension of competition.

-Likewise, DNA is in the crosshairs of Tykerb, and a few other 2nd generation kinase drugs. When appraising DNA's stock, the big question is how much will DNA be able to grow it's franchises versus melt due to competitive offerings and/or competitive pricing. It is interesting to think that DNA's valuation in the medium term could be driven less by their own pipeline, and more by the pipeline of competitors.


In other news, this will be the last post to the Xcovery blog. As some of you know, the fact that there's a public blog that shares a name with our start-up kinase therapeutics company, Xcovery, was totally unintended. Xcovery has a brilliant future ahead of it, and I wouldn't want anything said on this blog to be potentially misconstrued or damaging to the company. In a world where there's only about 30 potential partners for Xcovery's products (if that), ticking off one potential partner via a blog posting (whether mine, or someone's comment) is something that we can't take a chance on.

I'll still put forward opinions and analysis on another, anonymous blog that I'll be launching this spring. Look forward to candid stock analysis, a little more attitude and personality, and perhaps a little less focus on kinases. There won't be a direct link from Xcovery to the new blog, for obvious reasons, but if you see a blog with posts that echo the ones you see here, then you'd be on target.



For your fill of insightful kinase and pharma commentary, please visit the very excellent KinasePro and In The Pipeline blogs.

In the meantime, you can reach me by mail at tim (-at-) xcovery.com

I'd like to thank the people who made ~10,000(!) visits to this space in less than 4 months, and especially those who added to the blog via comments. I started this outlet for my analysis for my own enjoyment, but I'm happy to say that I've gained tremendously from all of the interactions and learned alot from you. I hope that I've been able to do at least a little bit of the same for you.

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.)