Pfiz­er gets some en­cour­ag­ing PhI­II news on a fran­chise sav­ior, but is a dos­ing ad­van­tage worth the $295M up­front?

Close to 3 years af­ter Op­ko tried to de­fend it­self as shares tum­bled on the news that its long-act­ing growth hor­mone had failed to out­per­form a place­bo, the Pfiz­er part­ner $PFE is back. And this time they’re pitch­ing Phase III da­ta that demon­strate their drug is non-in­fe­ri­or — or maybe a tad bet­ter — than their well-known but fad­ing stan­dard in the field.

The com­para­tor drug here is Genotropin, which earned a mar­gin­al $142 mil­lion for Pfiz­er last year — down 9% from the year be­fore. Ap­proved 24 years ago, biosim­i­lars are now in de­vel­op­ment that Pfiz­er would like to stay out in front of. The mar­ket leader here is Norditropin, a growth hor­mone from No­vo Nordisk that us­es the same ba­sic in­gre­di­ent as Genotropin, which the Dan­ish com­pa­ny sells with a kid-friend­ly self-in­jectable pen. That would al­so present some big com­pe­ti­tion if the new ther­a­py from Op­ko/Pfiz­er makes it to the mar­ket.

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