Lots of data – some good, some bad. Let’s do BiPar first…

BiPar Sciences says its PARP inhibitor, BSI-201, was able to show a clinical benefit in ~ 62% of patients vs. 21% of patients receiving chemotherapy alone (p= 0.0002). The study’s primary outcome measure was tumor response (complete or partial response) and was seen in 48% of patients getting BSI-201 + chemotherapy (carboplatin, gemcitabine, or GC) vs. 16% in patients receiving chemotherapy alone. Women who received BSI-201 had a median PFS (progression-free survival) of 6.9 months and overall survival of 9.2 months vs. 3.3 and 5.7 months, respectively, for women receiving chemotherapy alone. The hazard ratios for PFS and overall survival were 0.342 (p< 0.0001) and 0.348 (p=0.0005), respectively.

The news is getting a lot of hype/press: coverage on Xconomy, coverage on Forbes, the WSJ, this great Bloomberg write-up and the fact that BiPar’s 5-year financing tour de force was led by Microsoft founder Paul Allen’s investment firm Vulcan Capital.

We wrote about BiPar back in April when the company announced Sanofi-Aventis had bought them for $500M. We pointed out that “bought” was a poor choice of words because Sanofi didn’t write a $500M check. Rather, it’s more of a licensing deal or structured buyout whereby payments are made on future development and regulatory milestones.

BiPar (or one of thie backers) also got upset with us after our post, probably because of this:

“BiPar was running low on cash and no one was interested in getting a deal done with them back in 08, so the company’s big investors came in early this year and gave them some survival funds ($20M to be exact) so they (the investors) wouldn’t look like failures with yet another start-up.”

It’s no secret they were running low on cash or that they’ve been trying to get a deal done for some time, but it looks like we were wrong – the data looks good. We also said this:

“Someone at BiPar (or their backers) is either cush-cush with someone at Sanofi and/or BiPar lucked out that Sanofi took this off their hands. Without knowing what Sanofi is actually paying to see BSI-201 results, we have to stick to our guns and say they’re desperate. Until we see solid data, we say to Sanofi: WTF? To BiPar: Ehhh, ‘congrats.’”

BiPar, or one of their VC’s, fired back at us:

“I’m sorry but it is very clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. It isn’t worth trying to correct your many factual inaccuracies. I will just say that you have given a number of us a good laugh this morning! Thanks!”

We were disappointed that our factual inaccuracies were not worth correcting because it would have been really nice to get more transparency in a public forum as opposed to the Biocentury-only interview that ran the weekend after the deal.

Anyway, what do the bears say?

TX Fund Manager says:

“sure sure #2. I’ve been in the VC game and I know how this works. You must be from Domain, canaan, etc…you got called out!!”

Anonymous says:

“Ok CaliforniaVC what are factual inaccuracies? And just because you don’t want it to be true does not make it false.”

And from Xconomy, Fred Moolten says:

“A number of PARP inhibitors have shown promise in retarding breast cancer growth, and are particularly promising in women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, which impair the ability of the cancer cells to repair DNA damage, and thus increase sensitivity to the inhibitors. However, the word “Bombshell” is very unfortunate in that it will raise expectations beyond what has been achieved to date. The results are modest. They should be celebrated and built upon, but not exaggerated with attention-grabbing headlines.”

There’s also the bulls. Vulcan consultant Michael Kranda, who also rounded up BiPar founding investors, said that a small number of thought leaders who saw the data before ASCO were “bowled over.”

“This is potentially a fundamental advance against solid tumors. When you talk to the leading companies and the leading doctors in this space, we’re seeing them compare the impact of this to (Novartis’ Gleevec). That drug obliterates tumors, and you don’t see many drugs get mentioned in conversation like that.”

For us, the data looks good on the surface (PFS looks very good actually) and we hope this one isn’t another that is “too good to be true.” We hope BSI-201 is a “bombshell.” What about the Paul Allen connection? Is the data strong enough to have stood without Allen? Did management not know what they were doing for 5 years and just get lucky with trip-neg breast?

Whatever the case, BiPar is looking good and has emerged as the star of ASCO 2009. BiPar – we take it back – all looks good so far, but why do you say you got bought by Sanofi? Why the hype?

Thoughts?

P.S. it looks Sanofi was the one got lucky – even Bloomberg is saying they got a bargain.

Anonymous Tip? Comments? Contact us at: hr@iguanabio.com

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