DACOGEN: notes from partner and competitor calls can be found in a separate post. Watch for a future post analyzing DACOGEN royalties going forward (Astex guided for a decrease to $55m in 2013 vs $70m in 2012).
(continue reading for additional notes)
LEE011 - partnered with Novartis NVS got an unexpected mention on the Swiss pharma's earnings call. Here is the exchange (via SeekingAlpha transcript)
"And then finally, you have a Phase II compound, a cell cycle inhibitor which LEE011 which is a competitor to a very high profile Pfizer drug. Could you just outline your development strategy in breast and indicate how many years you think you are behind Pfizer in bringing this drug to the market in breast, if indeed you are taking it forward in breast?
...about our cell cycle inhibitor in breast cancer, I think if you take a step back, we have multiple assets in the breast cancer arena. As you know, we are just launching Afinitor for HER2- patients. Hopefully, we’ll have nice data in HER2+ patients before the end of 2013.
We have a series of PI3 kinase inhibitors that are in clinic. In fact, we are in pivotal clinical trials in breast cancer with our PI3 kinase inhibitors and that should position, that is potentially one of the next launches in the field of breast cancer.
And then we have the cell cycle inhibitor which is much earlier, what’s unique about the Novartis strategy is we are in a position to combine these drugs in a way that other companies can’t because we have each of them in our portfolio.
And we firmly believe that breast cancer patients will rotate through all these therapies, all these lines of therapies, pushing off chemotherapy as long as possible in the company that figures out the ideal combination will be best positioned to win, and we think that’s an advantage that we have."