The Next Challenger to the EPO Monopoly

If it’s approved, is there any indication of how Hematide could be priced? Could less frequent dosing help reduce healthcare costs associated with anemia drugs?

Morris: When we look, over the next couple of years, at the commercial strategy including pricing for Hematide, we want to keep our options as open as we possibly can so we can see what the profile of the drug looks like as well as what the market’s going to look like at that point and time. We’re evaluating and analyzing and looking at how we would launch Hematide under several different options. We haven’t made a decision on that. In terms of manufacturing, we don’t have any issues in terms of the cost of making the drug, so from a pricing perspective we do have a lot of flexibility.

Under a capitated environment where the administration of these drugs becomes a cost center instead of a profit center, having to give a drug one time a month versus 10 to 13 times a month for ESA patients that are in the dialysis clinics, that could be a huge savings to the dialysis centers in terms of the administration costs associated with the drug.

What does Affymax’s partnership with Takeda Pharmaceuticals bring to the table?

Morris: We signed two different deals with Takeda. The first was we signed a deal with them to develop and commercialize the drug in Japan. Then as we were talking to a larger cadre of companies, Takeda really wanted to participate in the discussion in broadening the deal. We were very impressed with their global presence and how committed and excited they were about this drug. We decided to end up doing a deal with Takeda. Takeda really wants to become stronger in the U.S. They were very willing to work with us to strike a deal that would put Hematide at the center of the deal, so we would develop the drug on the renal side, they would develop the drug on the oncology side. They paid us a lot of money for these rights. The initial payments were $105 million. They certainly put a lot of money into the development of the product moving forward. They pay 70 percent of the out-of-pocket expenses for development now. They brought a lot of cash and financial resources to the collaboration. It would have been difficult for a small, young company like Affymax to muster without a strong partner like Takeda.