The common mistake made by people is thinking that having 'more' in the pipeline means that the company is better. What you really want to be focusing on is how many clinical and commercial competitors there are in the space the company is working in. Sure, IMU have compounds that target the HER2 monoclonal, anti-PD1, and oncolytic viral therapy markets, while RAC only have the FTO inhibitory market. However, an evaluation of clinical and commercial competitors highlights the significant difference in chance of commercial success and market capture.
Below is data taken from this website:
https://bciq.biocentury.com/Anyone can pull up this data with a free trial. I took these screenshots a few months ago, although it's likely that not much as changed.
Let's take IMU's two most advanced programs: HER2 and anti-PD1. There are 104 companies with 110 HER2 products with 15 approved and 10 marketed. There are 193 companies developing 165 anti-PD1 products with 8 approved and 28 marketed. So, while there are two advanced programs, IMU have to compete with a total of 38 different marketed compounds, which significantly decreases there chance of clinical and commercial success. If they are successful clinically, the ability to grab a large market share may be difficult.
Alternatively, there is only one company developing an FTO inhibitor. That company is RAC. There is literally no clinical or commercial competition. The likelihood of success is higher because of the significantly reduced clinical and commercial competition.
Essentially, I think IMU has a low realistic chance of clinical and commercial success based on the significantly increased clinical and commercial competition. Below is an excellent paper to read for people who are interested in learning about why large pharmaceutical companies put high importance on first in class and best in class drugs.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd4035@AlCp, you raise a really good point, although I think that it is only partly true. The limitation with historic data is that Zantrene was not used in the way it should have been, which explains the lack of efficacy in certain cancers. However, if you evaluate all of the clinical data, you'll find that there are very interesting results seen in patients that provide some level of confidence to the likelihood of success in the FTO realm.
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