While You Were Almost Upsetting

We've been told by certain football (soccer) fans that there are not enough allusions to the beautiful game in our weekend roundups. So as equal opportunity sports enthusiasts we thought Saturday's FA Cup fourth round near-upset of Premier League giants Liverpool by the part-timers from the curiously named Havant and Waterlooville away at Anfield warranted a mention. (And hey it's the NFL's ridiculous weekend off anyway.)

Even though they lost 5-2, this team of teachers, builders and trash collectors (not sure if there are any pharma bloggers on the team, but who knows maybe the mysterious Insider from Pharmagossip plays for them) led twice and gave one of the top teams in Europe quite a scare, at least in the first half.

What else was going on this weekend?

• Vytorin snafu: New York State AG Andrew Cuomo piles on. More at Pharmalot.
  
• Ben Goldacre highlights a few recent studies about publication bias (including one concerning SSRIs from last week's New England Journal of Medicine). Your indispensible Bad Science is here.
  
• Our Vytorin poll is closing today. Vote here.

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Here's Looking at You, Barry

Genentech held its mega-Christmas party this past weekend. This year's venue: AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants and, until recently, home field for the star slugger Barry Bonds. The day before, Bonds pleaded not guilty to charges that he'd lied to federal investigators about taking steroids.

Nice timing for the makers of human growth hormone, don't you think?

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Forsight Scores Big

With the Red Sox and Indians facing off in the American League Championship Series, IN VIVO Blog would like nothing more than to toss in an old baseball metaphor to describe how well investors in Forsight Labs second company did with their investment, but even the ever popular grand salami falls a bit short.

So with the shameless favorite sports team plug firmly inserted, we can go on to tell you that Forsight Newco II, founded just 10 months ago, raised approximately $5 million from investors to cover costs of product development and some early clinical testing of the company’s drug-eluting ocular punctual plug, a technology that can deliver drugs through the eyes’ own tears. For a video showing the product go here.

Now, just 10 months after the company’s inception, QLT stepped forward to pay $42 million upfront for the company. But the potential returns don't stop there. QLT also agreed to pay $5 million payment upon the initiation of phase III clinical trial for the first product; $20 million for the first commercialization of a product; $20 million for the commercialization of a second product; and $15 million on first commercialization of each subsequent product.

For those keeping score at home, that’s $67 million if QLT succeeds in getting one of these products on the market; $87 million if it gets two; $102 million for three and so on. To be sure, all of these potential payments are years off. QLT will need a few years to run the plugs through clinical study and isn't likely to get a product to market until 2011 or 2012.

QLT management is being criticized for overpaying, but Bob Butchofsky, president and chief executive officer of QLT, says the company’s punctual plug, which is inserted in one of the two ducts that drains tears from the eye, will put QLT in position to challenge the $6 billion eye drop market.

Unlike standard punctual plugs, which only slow the drainage of tears from the eye as a means of treating dry eye, QLT’s new plug contains a drug core. As the tear film flows against the plug, the drug is released delivering a steady stream of drug. The Newco identified glaucoma as a first application for the device, but the plug could be used to deliver any drugs currently delivered as eye drops. “I believe this is a start of a major change on how we treat ocular disease,” Butchofsky told analysts in a conference call this morning.

Others aren’t as impressed. QLT shares hit a 52-week low today after the deal was announced. An item on the Globe and Mail web site reported:

National Bank Financial analyst Prakash Gowd calls the deal pricey, citing “very limited data supporting the theoretical benefits of [ForSight’s] punctal plug technology. Moreover, he figures the technology is likely to be a “very competitive area and patents have not yet been clarified.”

QLT must be high on the technology as it made the only real bid for the company. Forsight CEO K. Angela Macfarlane says while Forsight had talks with other companies about its various programs, Newco II wasn’t being shopped around. (Curious about Forsight's first product? Go here.)

Robin Bellas, general partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, one of the investors, called the acquisition, "quite a surprise. We always expected to raise another round. It was unusual that QLT came to us and expressed strong interest in the program. We had no plans to sell it.”

For more about Forsight Labs go here.

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While You Were Winning the NL East!

M-V-P

How 'bout them Phillies! Could we be heading for an intrablog standoff between IN VIVO's Philly and Boston contingents? Only time will tell...

Sorry for the late and skinny weekend roundup; our flight was delayed several hours returning to the UK after the PSA conference and we were too excited about the Phillies victory (and frankly, without an easy internet connection) to post yesterday.

So we'll keep it short:

• Vernalis' and Endo's Frova hits the wall. The migraine drug's second time around at FDA--its supplemental NDA for expansion of its label into menstrually associated migraine--turned ugly over the weekend when the agency sent the companies a surprise "Not Approvable" letter. As one analyst told IN VIVO Blog today, "there's a lot of egg on a lot of faces" at Vernalis and Endo. The companies had been extremely optimistic about the drug's label expansion prospects.

(AP Photo/Tom Mihalek)

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Going, Going.....Google

Two bits of follow up on previous posts about the health care IT space.

AthenaHealth absolutely hit one out of the park with its IPO.

Shares opened at $18 and nearly doubled, hitting $35.50. This could be a big win for its VC investors including Oak Investment Partners, Venrock Associates, Draper, Fisher Jurvetson and Cardinal Partners. All together the four owned 65% of the company prior to the opening. IN VIVO Blog talked about the importance of this IPO back in June.

Meanwhile, speculation abounds that Google, in a bid to bolster its presence on the Web, is eyeing an acquisition of health care Web site leader WebMD. Last month, IN VIVO Blog admitted to being slightly underwhelmed by the early glimpses of Google's health offerings.

Apparently, we're not the only ones. Dan Penny, director and lead analyst for publishing Outsell Inc., a market research firm focused on the publishing industry, writes:

Implications: The discovery in 2005 that 12% of individuals would consult Google before seeing a doctor has sent a message to the search giant that it should be doing something with health information, but it doesn't seem to know how to add value to an area where others have stolen a march. Google Health, as it stands, is a confusing experiment that offers little more than an old-fashioned portal for health information. Google now realises that it needs to do more than aggregate, because the boom in online health information has sent users flocking to WebMD and similar sites, such as AOL Health and RevolutionHealth. A year ago, the idea of Google acquiring WebMD would have seemed rather bizarre, but since the purchase of YouTube, Google has proven its willingness to spend, and to spend on content as well as technology. Moreover, its rival, Microsoft, bought Medstory earlier this year in a clear attempt to secure some of the healthcare vertical for itself.

Oh yeah, and Google's health care push probably wasn't helped by the fact the fellow in charge of the effort is leaving.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming....

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While You Were Finally Watching Some Football

Autumn's here, and the NFL is back. IN VIVO Blog's contingent of Philadelphia Eagles fans is predictably feeling a little uneasy about the season ahead. Meanwhile, here are a few odds and ends from the weekend.

• More GSK hand-wringing in the UK papers, this time it's the Financial Times. (Hat Tip: Pharmagossip.)
  
• Hey look, free access to medical journals. (via the NYT)
• The SF Chronicle looks at personalized medicine, and how the FDA is encouraging drug developers to find genetic patterns in responses to treatment.

(Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

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While You Were Making History*

755*

IN VIVO Blog picked up on a few news items you may have missed over this fine summer weekend.

• The irony. Foot and mouth disease is back in Britain--though so far confined to a small area near the twin Pirbright laboratories of the UK's Institute for Animal Health and Merial Animal Health (a veterinary JV between Merck & Co. and Sanofi-Aventis).


• The agony. Mannkind is having trouble licensing its inhaled insulin product, the company's CEO said on Friday. The company's shares fell like they were whacked over the head with an Exubera bong. Wait, they were?


• The ecstacy! OK maybe not ecstacy, because we couldn't find anything resembling such excitement. But spending $16 billion (or selling out for $16 billion) must feel pretty good. The WSJ is reporting this morning ($ sub. reqd.) that Akzo Nobel is spending its Organon cash as ICI will accept a sweetened takeover offer.
  

(AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

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While You Were Running with the Bulls

That's gonna leave a mark

A few notes from the weekend that was ...

• Satisfaction Gauranteed! Can pharmaceutical firms profit with variations on the no-cure-no-pay strategy? The New York Times takes a look. Incidentally, if that sounds familiar you may have read another take on that issue on the IN VIVO Blog about six weeks ago ... and there'll be more in the next issue of IN VIVO.
  
• Accept No Substitutes! The San Francisco Chronicle reviews the pros and cons of generic biologics. Biosimilars? Biogenerics? Whatever you're calling them these days.
  
• For Refined Tastes! Tom Wolfe won't be reading this. And IN VIVO Blog thinks white suits look pretty damn silly, so we're even.


• Breaking Hearts Since 1883! The Philadelphia Phillies, favorite baseball team of a few of us at the IN VIVO Blog, lost their record 10,000th game last night, falling to the Cardinals 10-2. That ignominious milestone got us thinking ... is there a parallel in the pharmaceutical world, a company with a particularly striking blend of poor luck and staying power (and bad pitching)?

(AP Photo/ Inaki Porto)

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While You Were Dominating the Competition

If you were too busy playing in the Wimbledon semis and finals this weekend (or maybe just watching) to keep up with the news, IN VIVO Blog is here to help.

• Inhibition! Some news out of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis in Geneva this weekend. First up, Bayer's rivaroxaban was significantly more effective than Sanofi-aventis' Lovenox in preventing blood clots after knee surgery, Reuters reports. Rivaroxaban, a Factor Xa inhibitor, is being developed with Johnson & Johnson. Another Factor Xa inibhitor, Pfizer and BMS' apixiban (which is approximately a year behind rivaroxaban in development), also posted solid results, in a mid-stage trial. Reuters has the story.
  
• Indecision! UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has changed its mind, and now considers Eli Lilly's Alimta cost-effective in treating mesothelioma in certain patients.


• Interference!! Roche and Alnylam announced this morning a broad alliance in RNAi therapeutics, worth up to $1 billion. Alnylam gets $331 million up-front in cash and equity payments. We hope you're not all RNAi'd out cause there'll be more on this later ...

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