The pipeline candidate
As we witnessed with lead drug candidates, there are a slew of pipeline candidates that would make a lot of sense.
You could take a gamble on Pharmacyclics‘ rare blood cancer drug ibrutinib, which has peak sales potential of around $5 billion and delivered incredible response rates in mantle cell lymphoma mid-stage trials. Another strong possibility is Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE)‘s palbociclib — which, when combined with Novartis’ Femara in mid-stage trials, more than tripled progression-free survival for metastatic breast cancer patients’ to 26.1 months from just 7.5 months on Femara alone.
While a solid argument could be made for either, I’m going to put my chips behind Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD) oral hepatitis-C drug sofosbuvir. In four late-stage trials, sofosbuvir demonstrated efficacy far beyond that of the placebo; in some cases removing all traceable levels of HCV in patients four weeks after dosing was complete in 100% of the patient pool. Sofosbuvir is also a prime candidate to be combined with other hep-C drug hopefuls, creating a wide moat of potential treatment options should other oral candidate make it to approval.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of sofosbuvir is the huge patient pool that it would benefit. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 3.2 million people in the U.S. with hepatitis C, and many don’t even know they have the disease. Sofosbuvir, an oral medication, looks to drastically reduce the flu-like symptoms often associated with interferon injections seen in the current standard of treatment, while also delivering better efficacy. Wall Street anticipates peak sales of sofosbuvir could be around $3.8 billion, but I suspect it could be much higher.
My perfect biotech company
To recap, if I had my pick of the litter and could draft my biotech dream team, it would entail having Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ:BIIB)’s George Scangos at CEO, relying on Regeneron’s Eylea to drive near-term and long-term stability, and having Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD)’s Sofosbuvir provide the long-term growth boost.
What would be your so-called “perfect biotech?” Share your big three in the comments section below.
The article This Is What the Perfect Biotech Would Look Like originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Sean Williams.
Fool contributor Sean Williams has no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name TMFUltraLong, track every pick he makes under the screen name TrackUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle @TMFUltraLong.The Motley Fool recommends Gilead Sciences.
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