With Antiviral Sales Booming, Gilead Expects A Strong Year
This article was originally published in The Pink Sheet Daily
Executive Summary
While sales for its existing HIV franchise products were very strong, Gilead looks ahead to beginning Phase III of its proprietary "quad" pill.
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Notes From The J.P. Morgan Health Care Conference
From the Jan. 11-14 J.P. Morgan health care conference in San Francisco, editors of the 1IN VIVO Blog reported on both formal company presentations and the meeting buzz. Their notes are collected below:
Gilead's Positive Phase II Data On Quad Pill For HIV Eases Analysts Concerns
The four-drug combination pill for HIV has significant sales potential, and will be a mainstay for Gilead to protect its leadership in the market, but with two novel components there is still much work to be done.
Gilead drops resistant hypertension drug after Phase III failure
Gilead Sciences would rather allocate resources to other promising pipeline opportunities after its once-daily endothelin receptor antagonist darusentan missed co-primary efficacy endpoints in a Phase III clinical trial, the company said Dec. 14. Gilead reported initial positive results in April from a separate Phase III study, but the data later revealed cardiovascular safety signals (1Health News Daily, May 29, 2009). Endothelin (ET-1) is an amino acid peptide produced by the vascular endothelium that is a powerful vasoconstrictor. Darusentan selectively blocks the endothelin type-A receptor, thus blocking ET-1 activation. But in the failed DAR-312 study, darusentan patients failed to achieve statistically significant differences in sitting systolic and diastolic blood pressure from baseline to week 14 compared to placebo. The drug, however, did demonstrate superiority in those measures compared to guanfacine, and it met other secondary endpoints, Gilead noted