Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question will come from the line of Mark Monane from Needham; please proceed.
Mark Monane - Needham
Good morning and greeting from New York City. Thanks for the nice review of the programs. A question for you first on the commercial nature; could you go over a little more detail of the commercial plan in thinking about acute attacks for HAE.
How big a sales force does one need in order to address this market? Who is the target audience and maybe you could tie that into some of the questions raised at the FDA panel regarding ensuring them, that the drug is used safely and monitored?
Gustav Christensen
Mark, that was a couple of questions, maybe multiple, but let me try to do a couple of them. We believe that a very focused sales force as ViroPharma has done, of about 16 people plus a Medical Science Liaisons group to support them, is the right size to address the market in the U.S. The patient population in the U.S., they’re prevalence is about 130,000, so around 10,000 patients.
We know from Europe that the average patient under treatment with C1 treats about 18 attacks per year. So the market size is quite significant for acute attacks and it’s a market size significant enough to, as we’ve always said to be quite rewarding from more than one product.
In terms of safe use of the program, as we have said before, it’s going to be allowing the patient access 24/7 to a doctor’s office or a selected emergency room. So I think all of those things are pretty straight forward. Was there any other aspects to your?
Mark Monane - Needham
No, that was helpful in for the first question. Then in terms of the recent presentation, one of the results that we noticed was the rapid onset of action in two hours. I think the primary outcome was four hours. Maybe just help us around the standard deviation around the two hours and if the potential label might include two hours rather than four hours in terms of aspiring results?
Bill Pullman
Mark, its Bill Pullman. Now I can’t comment on what the label may or may not say, obviously that’s down to negotiation with the FDA. Clearly, we are very encouraged by some of the data we’ve achieved in our Phase III trials. You’ll be seeing more of that in scientific publications, focused on I think clinically relevant end points, like how quickly does it work and I think you highlight one of the things that we’ve noticed that. There is a rapid onset of action, a sustained duration of action and repeatability of action over time.
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