Isis says mipomersen worth more than market cap

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc's (ISIS.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) experimental cholesterol-lowering drug mipomersen is worth more to a licensing partner than the company's current market capitalization, according to Chief Executive Stanley Crooke.

Shares of Isis were trading at $16.09 late Wednesday on Nasdaq, bringing the company's current value to about $1.4 billion.

"The NPV (net present value) of mipomersen certainly rivals or exceeds our market cap," Crooke said at the Reuters Health Summit in New York.

He said the value of the drug has gone up as other experimental cholesterol drugs have failed or faced setbacks in the past year, including the surprise failure late last year of Pfizer Inc's (PFE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) torcetrapib to raise good cholesterol.

Isis announced several months ago it was launching a year-long auction to find a partner for mipomersen, the most important of its experimental drugs that use antisense technology.

"The NPV's that are coming back from the large companies that are looking at the drug are in the range where our market analyses and our views of the drug are," Crooke said.

"All of them are in the ballpark that we had hoped for," the CEO said.

He said peak annual U.S. sales of the drug, only in high-risk patients, could surpass $2 billion.

"Assume there are 16 million (U.S.) patients who know that if they don't get their LDL (bad cholesterol) down they will have a heart attack in the next five years, that's a fairly motivated group of patients," he added.

Down the road, Crooke said the drug could get a substantial sales boost from use among diabetics, a population highly prone to cardiovascular problems.

He hypothesized that the drug could cost $5,000 or $6,000 year.

With such a high-profile drug, Crooke said there is a possibility that Isis could be the target of a hostile takeover bid.

"An unwanted acquisition is our major risk right now," Crooke said.

Crooke added that he did not want to imply that a bid was imminent. "The high-risk period is when the first company that wants mipomersen feels it is losing it," the CEO said.