BioCryst Still Waiting for Flu Drug Deals: BioBuzz
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (
) --
Biocryst Pharmaceuticals
(BCRX) - Get Report
still has no contract with the U.S. government or any foreign governments to stockpile large quantities of its experimental flu drug peramivir.
In an business update released Tuesday, Biocryst said the U.S government agencies were "considering the future option of providing peramivir through an EUA in the event of a severe influenza outbreak with significant hospitalizations."
An EUA, or Emergency Use Authorization, would allow the government to purchase peramivir -- and allows doctors to use the drug on severely ill flu patients -- even though the drug is not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
But there's little news here. It's been well known for months that U.S. officials were weighing a peramivir purchase. In fact, a lot of bullish Biocryst investors expected a deal to be completed before the summer ended.
Last week, updated flu treatment guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to mention peramivir as a recommended treatment for hospitalized flu patients.
The same lack of meaningful progress seems to be taking place overseas. Biocryst announced "partnerships" for peramivir purchases outside the U.S.
But these ex-U.S. partnerships covering China, Israel, Brazil and Mexico are just "binding letters of intent," said Biocryst. These partners "will exclusively represent BioCryst and its antiviral peramivir for influenza stockpiling opportunities, as well as for marketing and distribution of peramivir for seasonal influenza upon local regulatory approval, within their territories outside the U.S.," according to Tuesday's press release.
In other words, no stockpiling contracts to date and Biocryst isn't making any money from peramivir or its partners yet.
Back in the U.S., Biocryst says it's finalizing design plans for the phase III peramivir studies, but most importantly, the company is still working on raising the money to fund the studies.
Data from peramivir phase III study in Japan presented this weekend at a medical conference showing the drug can fight seasonal flu just as well as
Roche's
Tamiflu. Investors have bid up Biocryst shares in the belief that governments will buy hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, of peramivir as a safeguard measure in case the swine flu escalates into a plague-like public health catastrophe.
-- Reported by Adam Feuerstein in Boston
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