Dr. Aschoff: I had absolutely no belief that the heterogeneous European, American and South American patient population in Medivation's Phase III trial that just failed could ever replicate the homogeneous group of Russian patients that were largely recruited at only three of 11 sites in the Russian trial - that was the original Alzheimer's trial for Dimebon. Everything about the company was difficult to trust and partner Pfizer has made many bad investments, so that deal had no chance of scaring me away.
TWST: What about Dendreon? You had a "sell" rating for five years and now you have a "buy" rating. What happened?
Dr. Aschoff: They put up solid data early in 2009. I think the thing to learn from Dendreon is when a stock is essentially at an all-time low going into a pivotal event, you might want to back off from being so aggressive with a "sell" rating. You might have wanted to consider that hardly anyone favored it then, so how much lower could it go? I was able to see the data presented in Chicago last year, and then my last concern of stroke imbalance, which was an imbalance in the first two Phase III trials, was assuaged when there was no imbalance in the IMPACT trial. The trial arms were perfectly balanced, 6-3 for a 2-1 randomized trial. So I had no safety concerns, and that's when I went from the "hold" rating that I went to about a week before to a "buy" rating at about $20 per share, and it has been almost a double from there. I don't see anything getting in the way of FDA approval for Provenge. Approval would be a material risk reduction that would justify the stock to be well into the $40s because now you have removed FDA risk and Dendreon now just has to commercialize it, which they have enough money to do smoothly, and to train the employees properly.
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