As we watch various MSM pundits and buy side Wall Street analysts remark (speculatively) that Idenix must have a formidable nucleotide patent estate in the field of Hep C therapies, in order to justify the eye-popping premium Merck has just offered yesterday morning. . . we would tend to agree.
We know that Merck is nothing if not deliberate — so this is a well-thought through price. And it reflects more than pipeline.
It reflects the value of a patent estate — patent suits now, and many more likely to come. In San Franciso, Merck has sworn/asserted that the Gilead sofosbuvir offering (a perhaps $10 billion a year juggernaut) has scant useful application in fighting Hep C, in humans — absent the use of (it is claimed, Merck and Idenix patented) discoveries and processes — to convert the intermediate chemical compound into various human consumable metabolites…
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DRUG REGULATORY AFFAIRS INTERNATIONAL 