UPDATE: Stifel Reiterates On Medivation Following Prostate Cancer Survey

In a report published Monday, Stifel analyst Joel Sendek reiterated a Buy rating on Medivation (NASDAQ: MDVN), and raised the price target from $81.00 to $83.00.In the report, Stifel noted, “Based on our survey of 40 doctors who treat prostate cancer, we believe that Xtandi has the potential to become the dominant pre-chemotherapy prostate cancer drug, ahead of Zytiga."We base our belief on 3 factors: In their metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer patients (mCRPC), urologists estimate 30% of their patients will start on Xtandi as their first systemic treatment, above 27% for Zytiga and 5% for chemotherapy. We believe that urologists will be the primary treating physicians in the front-line setting based on the high relative proportion of urologists writing Xtandi scripts prior to pre-chemo approval. Both urologists and oncologists said that overall survival benefit is the primary factor in choosing front-line therapy."We note that in the Phase III PREVAIL trial, Xtandi had a 29% reduction of risk of death compared to 21% for Zytiga. Surveyed docs noted that they will use less chemotherapy in all lines of treatment, most notably the front-line. We believe that most of the patients who would have been treated with chemo will be treated with an oral anti-androgen instead and note that urologists preferred Xtandi to Zytiga by a 4-to-3 margin.”Medivation closed on Friday at $77.26.