Morgan Stanley Comments on Gen-Probe's New Product CLEAR (GPRO)

Morgan Stanley provided color on Gen-Probe's

new product pipeline in a research report published today. Morgan Stanley commented specifically on the "commercial and financial implications of the US clinical trial data for Aptima HPV called CLEAR that will be presented this weekend at EUROGIN." In the report, Morgan Stanley states, "We believe CLEAR will show Gen-Probe's Aptima HPV to have both modestly lower sensitivity (by 1-2%) and modestly greater specificity (2-4%) than Qiagen's HC2 in the commercially relevant screening population (~95% of the market) – an outcome generally in-line with the consensus view. Aptima's specificity advantage will be statistically significant but a lower point estimate of sensitivity for a novel RNA-based test is likely to mute this advantage commercially in a sensitivity-focused US screening market. Morgan Stanley currently has an Equal-weight rating on Gen-Probe. Gen-Probe's shares closed at $82.00 on Tuesday.