excellent news regarding bta798

Well, this mornings announcement was most welcome. I'm very confident that a license deal will be soon to follow.

The media hasn't jumped on this yet, but it's a compound that is safe to use and both a cure and preventative for the common cold. Isn't this the holy grail of medical science?

Some background to the common cold:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold

Interesting points are:

1) In the United States, the common cold leads to 75 to 100 million physician visits annually at a conservative cost estimate of $7.7 billion per year.

2) Americans spend $2.9 billion on over-the-counter drugs and another $400 million on prescription medicines for symptomatic relief.

3) There are no medications or herbal remedies proven to shorten the duration of illness.

Another drug called pleconaril attempted clinical trials and the drug worked, however failed approval due to severe side effects. BTA798 is more effective, available in tablet form and passed Phase I with a good safety profile. It's interesting to note that Biota is targeting the drug to treat high risk patients, but if it's safe then there will be no stopping doctors prescribing the drug to regular cold patients... the market could be massive. Ask yourself, would you pay $40 to recover from the common cold or suffer with a runny nose for a week or more?

My take on today's results:

- Fantastic efficacy
- Effectiveness and availability was correlated to dose
- It both prevented patients getting the cold along with reducing severity, this could lead to regular preventative use with high risk patients
- Biota is looking to treat HRV in the next trial in people who naturally contract the virus

All this means that BTA798 could become really big news for Biota... it just hasn't caught on. It will however catch on when a license deal is announced... hopefully Biota will ask for expressions of interest and get a competitive process going, surely large pharma see the massive potential here. A possible FDA approved, proven in clinical trials tablet which prevents and cures the common cold. If that is not the holy grail for major pharma then I don't know what is!