fda approves amyvid for alzheimers diagnosis, page-3

Ramses, I guess any improvement in diagnostics for Alzheimer's disease will help drug developers to hit it earlier, but I read that and cant see that it is any more effective than the imaging Chris Rowe is doing at Austin Health. He and Reisa Sperling who was just visiting Melbourne are world leaders in that field.
It will help Eli Lilly who have mounted a huge effort to tackle Alzheimer's, only to see their first Phasae3 candidate, Semagacestat, a secretase inhibitor, make patients worse in a phase3 that had to be stopped. Now with their next effort,solanezumab, a monoclonal antibody that removes amyloid in a similar way to Bapi, about to produce phase 3 results this year, they probably have more bad news on the way.
If and when solanezumab and Bapi fail to produce a drug, there could be a big positive effect on PBT IMHO
Lilly have always said they would not partner for an Alzheimer's drug, but woud develop one in house.
[Lilly is already facing the biggest “patent cliff” in the industry. Five of its six leading products face generic competition in the next four years. Barbara Ryan, a stock analyst with Deutsche Bank, said Lilly’s earnings will decline 35 percent by 2014 unless it makes one of the larger acquisitions it has historically resisted.

“Each individual issue is not necessarily all that significant, but collectively Lilly faces a real uphill battle because they face a significant amount of generic competition over the next several years and they are making a singular bet on their pipeline,” Ms. Ryan said in an interview. “And the news hasn’t been very good.”]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/business/18lilly.html