Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you, sir. (Operator Instructions). We’ll take our first question from Jim Birchenough with Barkley’s Capital.
Jim Birchenough – Barclays Capital
Hi guys, congratulations on the progress this year.
Bob Conway
Thank you.
Jim Birchenough – Barclays Capital
Just had a question -- coming out of ACR on 797, while we saw some great benefits on the acute pain setting, there were some questions around the JNJ compound, 469 and some disappointing data in RA and I believed the investigator suggested that there’s was a waning of efficacy that occurred pretty quickly with that p36 MAP kinase inhibitor and some suggestion that it might be a class effect, that you might not get a durable on effect on either bio markers or pain scores, so just wanted to get a sense of what your thoughts were on that JNJ data and whether you have any concerns around 797 in terms of durability of effect.
Michael Carruthers
Yeah, it’s very interesting, so we’ve been trying to look at -- of course, we’re looking at the JNJ and trying to understand what level of sydokine (ph) and pg2 inhibition they achieved. From what we’ve seen and from the PK data they’ve shown and what we know about the compound, the compound is a relatively weak inhibitor of psydochines in human whole blood, meaning that they would needed to have achieved a several microgram per milliliter level to have good inhibition of psydochines continuously.
What’s unique about 797 is that we achieve an EC 99.9 for about four hours and if you notice in our dp2 study, there was a pretty significant drop-off of activity between the 400 and 200 milligram dose. We think that’s actually really significant in that we may have the only compound that’s been tested that has the efficacy and potency to actually have complete inhibition of psydochines and pg2 for a relatively short period of time.
This would drive us to look at the higher doses of our drug and actually try to utilize that information we have to both demonstrate efficacy in the pain studies, but also I think in, perhaps, rheumatoid arthritis studies, have a different profile than what the psyo-compound saw.
I think I’d also go back to Vertex and Vertex reported on some data where the CRP kind of laxed and waned as well. Interestingly, the bone marker CTX did not go down over time and so, we actually knew that back in March and April and ankylosing spondylitis -- and one of the reasons we chose ankylosing spondylitis because ankylosing spondylitis has a significant pain component, which is different than rheumatoid arthritis.
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