Feuerstein's Biotech Mailbag

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Would anyone be surprised that Thursday's Dendreon(DNDN) column (about prostate cancer drug Provenge's date with the Food and Drug Administration) prompted another torrent of email? No, I didn't think so. Let me quickly address the questions that came up most frequently.

I didn't include European or rest-of-world revenue in my model because, given the potentially big numbers here, it wasn't really necessary to make the story interesting. Yes, Dendreon has an international commercial opportunity for Provenge, whether alone or with a partner. For my purposes, I just consider that upside.

Yes, there are other prostate cancer drugs in development, including another immunotherapy, GVAX from Cell Genesys(CEGE), which if also approved could dampen Provenge peak sales. I agree with that, although I haven't been impressed with GVAX.

What's nice about building a revenue model like the one I did for Provenge is that you can play around with the variables very easily. So, if you're inclined to be a geek like me, copy and paste the charts from the column into an Excel or Google spreadsheet, input the formulas and have some fun changing up penetration rates, pricing, etc. to see what you get for Provenge sales.

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Regarding my column about Avexa's intriguing HIV drug, reader T.K. wrote to say he doesn't think apricitabine will appeal to the big HIV players because nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, or NRTIs, "aren't hot anymore."

NRTIs alone might not be hot HIV drugs, especially given new drugs coming soon, that's true. But I believe NRTIs such as apricitabine are very attractive because they can be combined with newer, "hotter" HIV drugs to create easy-to-take combination therapies. Gilead Sciences(GILD) already has Atripla, the first single-pill, once-daily HIV treatment, but why not create something similar for more treatment-experienced HIV patients?

And while apricitabine might be approved first for treatment-experienced patients, given the right partner or owner, it can move up to the more lucrative front line, eventually.

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