OvaScience, Seattle Genetics, and Qiagen Present at 31st J.P. Morgan Heathcare Event

This year’s 2013 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco (January 7  to 10) had around 8400 attendees and around 400 company presentations.  Navigating through the hallways to the numerous presentations was a challenge.  These are three of the many company presentations I attended.

OvaScience’s CEO Michelle Dipp gave a very interesting presentation about new infertility treatment options. The U.S. fertility market is over $4 billion and it is seeing rapid worldwide growth, said Dipp.  Some other interesting statistics included that every year there are 7.3 million childbearing women that are infertile and 1.2 million women seeking treatment.  There are over 400 IVF clinics in the U.S.  Most of them are in the East and West Coast.  Unfortunately, most IVF treatments fail because many women are delaying childbirth. Apparently, energy in eggs decreases with age.

OvaScience has discovered that adding mitochondria to human eggs increases IVF success. The company’s new approach to infertility is called the Egg Precursor Cell (EggPC).  The discovery of these EggPCs (germline stem cells) that mature into eggs offers new fertility treatment options, said Dipp.

The company has two product candidates that include Augment and OvaTure.  There is a study underway for the firm’s first product, Augment.  Augment uses EggPC mitochondria to rejuvenate eggs.  The company’s second product OvaTure involves fresh, young, healthy eggs matured in the lab from EggPCs.  The OvaTure program is currently being designed.  According to Dipp, the goal is to improve the IVF success rate for older women while reducing the number of embryos that need to be transferred to the uterus thus decreasing the number of multiple births.  That would be great news for the many infertile women who could benefit from this treatment and not have to worry about the potential of multiple births.

Seattle Genetics’ President and CEO Clay Siegall began his presentation with the company’s key value drivers.  They include building the Adcetris franchise, advancing the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) pipeline and technology along with its strong financial position and collaborations to fund a very robust research.  Adcetris targets the CD30 cell membrane protein, which is expressed on the surface of certain types of lymphoma cells.  Adcetris is FDA approved for relapsed Hodgkin lymphoma and systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma.

The firm also received EU approval for Adcetris in October 2012.  Seattle Genetics has 20 internal and collaborator ongoing clinical programs for Hodgkin lymphoma and other cancers.  The company has collaborations with Millennium/Takeda, Genentech, Celldex, Bayer, and Abbott just to name a few.  According to Siegall, “ADC collaborations have generated over $200 million to date with the potential for around $3.8 billion in future milestones plus royalties.”  Net product sales of Adcetris since launch in August 2011 are over $145 million.  Siegall said they are “making strong progress towards a fully global brand.”

Peer Schatz, President and CEO at QIAGEN N.V., began by saying that “2012 was a very important and successful year.”  He said that QIAsymphony is the company’s fastest growing product in molecular diagnostic placements with Europe being the biggest at 40 percent and the U.S. coming in at 35 percent.  Another of its products is the Therascreen KRAS test, a companion diagnostic for metastatic colon cancer to help guide doctors in the use of Erbitux.  “The U.S. KRAS market conversion is progressing well.  Doctors are demanding the Therascreen test,” said Schatz.

Over the next 2 years, the firm will be developing several new molecular diagnostic assays.  Qiagen is also developing new biomarkers with the potential as companion diagnostics.  One of the company’s goals is to “expand NGS from research to routine clinical use.”  Qiagen is preparing the launch of its first NGS workflows in 2013, which includes a broad range of its products such as the QIAsymphony NGS version.  In closing, Schatz said the company will be “executing on its 2013 initiatives to drive growth and innovation at a faster pace.”