Maybe it’s the sports fanatic in me, but I love a good head-to-head clinical trial. In a trial against a placebo, a company can only hurt itself. But if a drug fails head-to-head against a rival, the company gets hurt, and its competitor gets a boost. It takes guts for a company to put itself on the line like that.
Then again, GlaxoSmithKline
Data from a trial presented today seems to suggest that the vaccine performs better, but Glaxo may have used the wrong measurement to make a definitive conclusion. Instead of looking at the rate of infection with HPV in females, which is what the vaccine is actually preventing, Glaxo looked at antibody levels in the patients. While higher antibody levels seen in patients that received Cervarix might result in a lower infection rate, the extra antibodies could also be circulating in the bloodstream, doing nothing. It's kind of like determining the winner of a baseball game based on the number of hits. The team with the most hits often wins, but not always. And besides, that's not the point of the game.
Vaccines have become an integral part of the business for companies like Glaxo, Merck, Novartis
Unfortunately for Glaxo, I don't think this data will be enough to help Cervarix knock Gardasil from the top spot, should the FDA approve Cervarix later this year. Doctors will need to see the final score before they'll switch teams.
Further Foolishness:
- A capitalistic pig's view of swine flu.
- 10 dividend stocks for the next decade and beyond.
- Glaxo is hitting the patent cliff earlier than others.
