BTA - Biota Holdings

spottygoose said:

The end result of that will be more orders and the media does seem to have picked up on the Tamiflu (rival medication) resistance story again....

Click to expand...

persistentone said:

Can someone summarize what worldwide sales of Tamiflu and Relenza have been, and how much does Biota make under contract for those Relenza sales?

Click to expand...

Date: 24/4/2009
Author: Ari Sharp
Source: The Age --- Page: B3
Shares in Biota Holdings rose on 23 April 2009 due to a rise in sales of its antiviral inhalant, Relenza. GlaxoSmithKline announced that sales of Relenza rose to $A462 million in the March quarter. Biota shares rose by $A0.125 to $A0.905. However, its share price had already risen, prompting a query by the ASX.

Date: 31/3/2009
Author: Ari Sharp
Source: The Age --- Page: B2
Biota Holdings has made an agreement related to its influenza inhibitor with aJapanese pharmaceutical company, Daiichi Sankyo. If phase III clinical trialsare successful, Daiichi Sankyo will manufacture and market the product in Japan.The announcement lifted Biota's shares by $A0.06 to $A0.60 on 30 March 2009

Click to expand...

Glaxo’s Relenza Beat Rival Tamiflu in Stockpile Sales (Update1)
Share | Email | Print | A A A

By Jason Gale, Trista Kelley and Simeon Bennett

April 27 (Bloomberg) -- GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s flu drug Relenza beat Roche Holding AG’s Tamiflu in sales to governments for the first time last quarter, a sign authorities are seeking a broader range of medicines to protect against a pandemic.

Government orders of Relenza were 20 percent higher than those for Tamiflu in the first quarter, according to data from both companies released before the current swine flu outbreak. Biota Holdings Ltd., which earns royalties on Relenza sales, jumped as much as 89 percent today on speculation sales will gain as concerns mount that the swine flu outbreak may spread.

Demand for Relenza was stoked by reports of widespread resistance of H1N1, a common seasonal flu virus, to Tamiflu. The U.K. and Japan increased orders for the drug to prepare for a possible influenza pandemic on concern Tamiflu-evading seasonal flu could exchange genes with a pandemic strain, making that pill a weaker weapon to fight a global contagion. Almost all H1N1 samples tested last winter were resistant to Tamiflu, the World Health Organization said.

“Governments are balancing their stockpiles” by including more Relenza, said Stephen Rea, a Glaxo spokesman, in an April 24 phone interview. “Our expectation would be that other governments would follow suit. Our view would be the U.S. government would also be persuaded.”

Governments ordered about 220 million pounds ($322 million) worth of Relenza in the three months ended March, Rea said. That compares with orders for Tamiflu of 304 million Swiss francs ($266 million), Basel, Switzerland-based Roche said April 17.

Bird Flu Fears

Total sales of Tamiflu in the first quarter, including revenue from doctors’ prescriptions of the drug for seasonal flu, were 401 million Swiss francs, compared with 222 million pounds for Relenza. Seasonal sales of Relenza were “a couple of million” pounds in the quarter and sales for stockpiles were the “vast majority” of the total, Rea said.

“Based on the information we’ve got so far, governments are tending not to be reducing their Tamiflu,” said David Reddy, head of Roche’s influenza task force, in an April 23 telephone interview. “Some governments are buying some additional reserves of alternative antivirals to manage cases of resistance.”

Fears of a global influenza outbreak sparked by the H5N1 strain of avian flu prompted governments around the world to store millions of courses of Tamiflu that could be used to prevent infection in health-care workers and others performing critical job functions. That demand spurred Tamiflu sales worth 2.6 billion Swiss francs in 2006 and 2.1 billion francs in 2007.

Stockpiles Deployed

Those stockpiles may be deployed if the swine flu virus that’s killed more than 80 people in Mexico and sickened others in the U.S. and Canada sparks a global pandemic. Both Relenza and Tamiflu are effective against the pathogen, according to the Geneva-based WHO.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said 25 percent of U.S. antiviral stockpiles are being released. The Defense Department “has procured and strategically positioned 7 million treatment courses of Tamiflu,” Napolitano said. In all, there are 50 million courses, she said.

The H5N1 avian flu virus isn’t resistant to Tamiflu, though the pill’s potency could be lost if the virus recombines with the Tamiflu-resistant H1N1 strain, Robin Robinson, director of the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority in Washington, told the Scientific American last month.

Human Cases

There have been at least 420 human cases of avian flu, mostly in Asia, and 257 of those patients died since 2003, according to WHO, a Geneva-based United Nations agency. Symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, eye infections, pneumonia and acute respiratory distress.

Tamiflu and Relenza, an inhaled powder made by London-based Glaxo, reduce severity and the duration of symptoms by 24-to-30 hours if treatment is started within the first two days of illness, according to the companies.

Both drugs work by blocking a protein on the surface of influenza particles called neuraminidase which allows the virus to spread from infected cells to other cells in the body. Scientists say mutant H1N1 viruses have evolved to evade Tamiflu through a single mutation in the neuraminidase that prevents the medicine from clinging to the viral protein, thereby enabling the pathogen to spread. Relenza isn’t affected by the mutation.

Predicting Resistance

Resistance among seasonal influenza strains doesn’t predict resistance among pandemic influenza viruses, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said this year. It’s unknown whether resistance to Relenza or Tamiflu may become a problem with widespread use of the drugs during a pandemic, it said.

The U.S. states and federal government aim to stockpile 81 million courses of antiviral medications as part of public health preparedness for a pandemic, according to the Department of Health and Human Services report.

Canada will adjust the combination of antiviral medications in its national emergency stockpile because of concern about Tamiflu resistance among influenza viruses, the Canadian Press reported this week.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said it will boost its supply of Relenza, along with older antivirals such as amantadine and rimantadine, the news service reported. Canada’s emergency stockpile, a backup to the country’s national antiviral stockpile, currently contains 14 million doses, enough to treat 1.4 million people, the report said.

Biota Shares Surge

“The global market for antiviral pandemic stockpiling is shifting very rapidly to include a major Relenza component, given the recurring problems with Tamiflu at present,” Thomas Duthy, who tracks health-care and biotechnology companies for Taylor Collison Ltd. in Sydney, said in an April 23 report.

Biota, based in Melbourne, surged 83 percent to A$1.59 at 3:45 p.m. local time in Sydney trading, the most since October 1987, and rose as much as 89 percent after the WHO called swine flu a “public health emergency of international concern.” Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index fell 0.1 percent.

Duthy rates Biota a “speculative buy” and said he expects authorities in France, Germany and Hong Kong to add Relenza to their stockpiles over the next two years.

Relenza and Tamiflu have an expiry date five years after manufacturing.

Click to expand...

michael_selway said:

HI not bad today!



Earnings and Dividends Forecast (cents per share)
2008 2009 2010 2011
EPS -3.6 -1.6 2.9 7.7
DPS 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Click to expand...

Prospector said:

Hmm, too late for me, up 78% I only looked at its charts last week too!

Click to expand...

skyQuake said:

I don't think this surge is over yet. The Media will dogpile on and so will punters. Look at how long the bird flu hype took to die down.

Click to expand...