The Upshot: The Kids in the Hall at H&Q

SAN FRANCISCO -- The curtain has fallen on the 20th annual JPMorgan H&Q health care conference. ImClone Systems (IMCL Quote) was, of course, the big newsmaker, but there were plenty of other companies making noise, both good and bad. TheStreet.com had its notebook open; here's what we jotted down:

The Best Friend They Never Had

A lot has been made of the deafening silence emanating from Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY Quote) regarding its partner ImClone Systems and the Erbitux mess. Well, Bristol-Myers was scheduled to appear at the conference, but apparently dropped out at the last minute.

A version of the conference calendar from just a few days before the start of the event event, obtained by TSC, had Bristol-Myers scheduled for a presentation at 10 a.m. PST on Wednesday, 30 minutes before ImClone was set to take the stage. But in the final version of the calendar, Bristol-Myers was nowhere to be seen.

An H&Q spokeswoman says that, to her knowledge, Bristol-Myers was never scheduled, and she doesn't know why the company would have been on the earlier calendar.

But even if you discount the ImClone connection, the drug giant's absence still seems strange. After all, every other major pharmaceutical company, from Pfizer (PFE Quote) and Merck (MRK Quote) to Eli Lilly (LLY Quote) and American Home Products (AHP Quote) was here. So, why did Bristol-Myers give H&Q the cold shoulder?

Talk Is Cheap, Whiskey Costs Money

Another important lesson from ImClone: Be careful of making promises you can't keep.

During his presentation Wednesday, Mark Levin, the very enthusiastic CEO of Millennium Pharmaceuticals (MLNM Quote), remarked that his company's gene-to-patient technology would turbo-charge drug-development productivity to levels never before seen in the industry. Just how productive? Well, he predicted that by 2005, Millennium would be pushing one or two new drugs every year onto the market, while keeping the pipeline brimming with at least five experimental drugs entering human clinical trials every year.

The prediction enlisted some wide-eyed stares from the audience, even a few snickers, because so far, Millennium's genomics platform has managed to move only a single drug into human testing. Sure, Millennium has a lot of other drugs on its plate, but they've all come from old-fashioned acquisitions and partnerships, not exactly the most cutting-edge way to build the pharmaceutical firm of the next century.

The Closed-Door Policy

Memo to Biopure (BPUR Quote) executives: Read up on Regulation FD.

The blood substitute company -- no stranger to readers of TSC -- tried to have this reporter removed from its breakout session with fund managers on Monday. The reporter refused to leave. After a brief argument, the company backed down when H&Q officials said that reporters had every right to attend the question-and-answer session, where most of the good stuff at the conference happens.

Afterwards, a representative from Biopure's public relations firm dismissed the whole thing as a misunderstanding. Yeah, right.

The Wedding Planners

Both Immunex (IMNX Quote) and Amgen (AMGN Quote)(made their presence felt at the conference this year.

Both companies were, of course, pushing the merits of their recently announced $16 billion merger. But more interesting was the bullish talk about the push to expand the rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel into psoriasis.

Immunex will be presenting results from late-stage tests of Enbrel in psoriasis at the big dermatology science meeting in February. The chatter at H&Q: The Enbrel psoriasis data are going to be great, which will spur dermatologists to start prescribing Enbrel to their psoriasis patients even before the FDA officially approves the drug for use in the disease.

And if this scenario plays out, it could spell trouble for Biogen (BGEN Quote) and Genentech (DNA Quote) both of which have their own psoriasis drugs in development. Biogen's Amevive is being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration right now, and was supposed to have first-mover advantage. That would be blunted if Enbrel racks up significant off-label sales among dermatologists.

And woe is Genentech and its drug Xanelim, which already has been hit with delays and is not expected to reach the FDA until this summer.

Speaking of Genentech, 2002 is looking like a lean year. The biotech giant won't have any new drugs approved this year because of filing delays for the above-mentioned Xanelim and the asthma drug Xolair.

Genentech does have the blockbuster cancer drug Rituxan to cushion the blow, and there surely will be news coming out of the company's research pipeline, which is the strongest in the biotech industry.

But still, there was a sense of unease among some fund managers at the conference about Genentech's ability to maintain earnings growth without some big event this year -- namely a large acquisition.

Genentech certainly has the cash and stock to pull off a deal, but the company's executives didn't exactly give off any signals that they were getting ready to pull the trigger either. Genentech COO Myrtle Potter commented that companies are making acquisitions to fill voids in their drug pipelines -- that's not a problem at Genentech. And CFO Louis Lavigne added that he, quite frankly, scratched his head over the logic of some of the recent mergers.

Maybe Somebody Needed a Nap

Was CV Therapeutics (CVTX Quote) CEO Louis Lange just having a cranky day Monday when he was seen berating a fund manager after she asked one too many questions about the company's experimental angina drug Ranolazine? Or maybe the fund manager hit a nerve?