Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Let’s begin with Donald Ellis of Thomas Weisel Partners.
Donald Ellis – Thomas Weisel Partners
Thank you and good afternoon everyone. My first question is for Jonah, and it’s regarding your position and your opinion on combining local esthetics (inaudible) with derma fillers. A product was launched today which includes about reserve 25% lidocaine and patients, when I speak to them about where exactly or when they exactly feel the pain with a derma filler injection, is that the site where the needle enters the skin and in which case lidocaine is now like would be that effective.
When you look at the label, the address event section of the product layout with that product that was launched today, you have a 52% when you had a mild moderate and severe pain you see about 52% influence in mild moderate and severe pain. Do you think there is a material benefit in adding a local anesthetic whose derma fillers, when based in on the label doesn’t look like to be maturely different from those that don’t contain lidocaine?
Jonah Shacknai
Sure, well I start off by saying that we do not expect the product that was launched today to be a major competitor in the market place, and it is not the first product in the market to contain lidocaine. After all the old collagen products, some of them also contained lidocaine and we have seen they’ve gone.
The question of whether lidocaine co-mixed at manufacturer with hyaluronic acid or other substances materially reduces pain, I think is a matter of opinion and patient experience. They are physicians and patients who will perceive a benefit from the addition of lidocaine particularly in certain anatomical sites of injection. There are other patients that may not realize the material benefit because the hyaluronic acid itself is essentially with the needle dissecting tissue and filling potential space causing a bit of tissue compression and that is what may cause the pain rather than the insertion of the needle.
Probably there is a market for both kinds of products out there and we have every reason in the world to believe the Restylane can be effectively marketed and gain regulatory approval with the lidocaine addition, I am sure we will be in that marketplace, but again how these products play out in terms of patient and physician preference is really going to come down to subjective view.
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