Alright Pharma Investors, time for the daily pharma watch!
CombinatoRX (CRXX):
With a DPUFA date set for February 22 for their lead drug Exalgo and a merger just recently completed with Neuromed, CombinatoRX decided to shake things up a whole lot with their senior management this morning. The company announced that Interim CEO Robert Forrester will be replaced by Mark Corrigan and Christopher Gallen will be the EVP of Research and Development.
Generex (GNBT):
Generex released a lengthy white paper this morning that focuses on shifting investors focus to their other cancer drugs in the pipeline that were acquired when Generex purchased Antigen Express. The drugs consist of a set of cancer vaccines that are in Phase II trials and one that is going into Phase III in 2010, the most promising one is a breast cancer vaccine that stimulates the immune system to recognize the breast cancer cells and attack them. The results from an interim analysis shows some pretty good results with 0 out of 49 relapses in the vaccine group and 5 out of 71 relapses in the control arm. The goal of the trial is to cut the relapse rate in half, which so far it has done well.
Additionally, there was an interview with Antigen’s Dr. Eric von Hofe in yesterday’s Worcester Business Journal Online where Dr. Hofe makes some pitches about the H1N1 vaccine in Generex’s portfolio. He also gives some insight into just how far out the cancer vaccine is in development. In the article (here) he states that he thinks that realistically the vaccine is some 5 to 8 years out of development, and that only if the data looks especially strong in Phase II would the company try to get approval of the drug without running a Phase III trial. So these statements would seem to contradict the added attention that Generex wants investors to focus on, don’t get me wrong the data in the Vaccine trials look really really good, but Generex was trying to shift investor focus this morning from their lead product Oral-Lyn. It would have been nice of the company to provide some kind of update on the progress of the clinical trial, or an estimated data release date so investors could better gauge how and when to place their bets on the company. cont’d on next page
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