view, and have approved the product for sale.
ZymoGenetics isn’t ready to offer its product sales forecast yet for 2010, although it plans to issue that guidance on its year-end conference call in February, Williams says. By the end of 2010, the product should start generating positive cash-flow for the business, he says.
To that end, Recothrom should start to help support the rest of ZymoGenetics’ pipeline. The company is now concentrating its resources on pegylated interferon lambda for hepatitis C; the IL-31 monoclonal antibody for inflammatory diseases of the skin; and IL-21 for cancer. ZymoGenetics is seeking to strike a partnership to develop the IL-21 drug candidate, similar to the one it did back in January with Bristol-Myers Squibb on the hepatitis C drug, which could be worth more than $1 billion over time.
Still, the slow sales of recombinant thrombin have taken a toll on ZymoGenetics as an organization. The company axed one-third of its workforce back in April, and eliminated another 15 percent of its workforce earlier this month as it got out of the business of discovering new immunology drugs. The company now has about 300 employees.
