Gilead

Analysts call Gilead a takeover target

Tracy Staton — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:38:36 -0400

Will Gilead Sciences continue to stand alone, or will it fall prey to buyout like its neighbors Chiron and Genentech? The company is dominant in the HIV market and is also exploring hear and lung disease treatments. Report

Gilead HIV med OK'd for hepatitis

Tracy Staton — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:37:22 -0400

Gilead Sciences is expanding its expertise further beyond its long-held specialty in HIV treatment. Its AIDS drug Viread has now been FDA-approved as a treatment for chronic hepatitis B, joining Gilead's first hep B treatment Hepsera, which accounted for $303 million in 2007 sales. The FDA's nod on Viread was based on two trials that showed it was better than Hepsera at combatting inflammation and scarring caused by the virus.

Analysts say the market for hepatitis B drugs is significant, because few of the more than 1 million people in the U.S. infected with the virus actually have been diagnosed.

- check out Gilead's release
- read the story in the International Herald Tribune

Docs back Viread for hepatitis B

Tracy Staton — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:47:38 -0400

Analysts are chatting up Gilead Science's HIV drug Viread as a treatment for hepatitis B. Currently under FDA review for that indication, Viread already has the backing of four out of five doctors, said Thomas Wei, a Piper Jaffray analyst."Feedback from this survey leads us to believe that Viread could enter the market with the best combination of efficacy, safety and resistance data, and coupled with a lower cost, could win the majority market share of the class," Wei wrote in a note to clients.

This is good news for Gilead, which has been fighting off Viread competitors lately. In November, the FDA gave tentative approval for the first generic version of Viread under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and in January, the Public Patent Foundation challenged four patents on the drug. The U.S. Patent Office has since upheld one of those patents, but there's been no ruling yet on the others.

- see the story in Forbes

Brazil mulls patent-busting on Tenofovir

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:59:55 -0400

The Brazilian government recently deemed the anti-HIV med Tenofovir a "public interest." That's code for, "We're thinking about issuing a compulsory license for this drug." Under WTO rules, countries can circumvent patent protection on drugs it needs to combat a public health crisis. Brazil has some 600,000 people living with HIV.

Currently, Brazil treats 31,300 of those patients with Tenofovir at a cost of $1,387 per person. If the country imported a generic version made in India--at a cost of $170 per patient per year--it could save more than $30 million annually.

Gilead Sciences, which makes Tenofovir, had applied for patent protection for the med in Brazil. The country's health ministry formally dissented. The application remains under review by regulators.

- see the story at Domain B
- get some background in Forbes

ALSO: The U.S. Trade Rep is keeping Thailand on its naughty list for its new habit of issuing compulsory licenses, which allow the government to circumvent patent protection, on various drugs. The pharma industry had been lobbying to have Thailand downgraded. Release | Report

Pfizer, Roche suffer as big drugs falter

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:59:57 -0400

Today's earnings roundup is a snapshot of pharma's challenges--generic competition, safety problems--and opportunities, namely biotech meds. Big-selling drugs lost ground, bringing their makers down with them. Safety-related charges depressed earnings. Read on, and you'll see.

Pfizer saw first-quarter net income drop by 18 percent as sales of its linchpin med Lipitor fell--and it hasn't even gone off patent yet. Generic competition for the allergy drug Zyrtec cut its sales by 75 percent. Growing drugs included Celebrex, whose sales rose 2.2 percent, and Chantix, which gained 71 percent. Overall, revenues fell by 5 percent to $11.85 billion.
Roche suffered as demand for the cancer med Herceptin slowed and sales of the antiviral drug Tamiflu sank. The flu drug lost 64 percent of its revenues, compared with last year's first quarter, when governments were actively stockpiling for a potential pandemic. Demand for Avastin leapt by 35 percent, offsetting the Herceptin losses. The declining dollar didn't help, either. Overall, revenues declined by 4 percent to $10.4 billion.
Baxter International managed to eke out a 6.5 percent increase in earnings despite two safety-related charges, one of $45 million on its withdrawn Colleague infusion pump and another of $11 million to cover the cost of its heparin recall. Revenues rose 7.6 percent to $2.88 billion. The company boosted its R&D spend to $190 million, a 19 percent increase.
The news from big biotech Gilead Sciences is rosier: The HIV specialist "trounced" Wall Street targets with earnings of $522.1 million, up from $447.6 million first-quarter 2007. Revenues jumped by 22 percent to $1.26 billion as the antiretroviral Truvada bought in $479.4 million, beating analysts' expectations.
Meanwhile, device maker St. Jude Medical reported a 27 percent hike in net income on strong sales of defibrillators. The company posted $184.8 million in profits on sales of $1.01 billion.

- read the Pfizer earnings in the Wall Street Journal
- check out the BBC's take on Roche
- see MarketWatch's Roche coverage
- find the Baxter story in the Chicago Tribune
- get the Gilead news from TheStreet
- check St. Jude's numbers in the WSJ