You are missing the point. With intent.
Positive phase III data is in hand.
Plec interacts with the viral capsid and prevents the virus from infecting a cell. If virus becomes resistant to drug, it is relatively attenuated (only one study published to date, which is hardly a rule).
The molecule has demo'd relatively low tox.
These are the desired characteristics for a specific, prophylatic anti-viral. Plec would address a high percentage of severe respiratory infections. You've got ahold of the Tiger, but you slipped off the tail.
The question is..... how many investors want to start the potential ride tomorrow? If there aren't many, you'll do fine. If institutional investors decide, overnight and given the data from the last two completed trials, that a market cap of 220 million is a pittance, you're screwed. Fortunately, for you, it is no longer fashionable to put together a basket of high-risk, mega-potential biotechs.
I'd strongly suggest consideration that the media blitz is in response to interest from a suitor, from Sanofi or any one of several other pharmas.
Again, I don't care where it goes tomorrow. I care where it is after an advisory committee meeting, and there's plenty of additional info to assess between now and then. However, I don't like investors that blindly short in the biotech sector, and your irrelevant posturing and fear-mongering can and will be met by observations that will progressively make you less comfortable. For example......
Since August 1996, the Company has conducted an open label program for
pleconaril so that people with life-threatening or seriously disabling
diseases caused by picornaviruses may receive pleconaril on a compassionate
use basis. As of December 31, 1998, a total of 48 patients (8 with
myocarditis, 21 with chronic meningoencephalitis in patients with immune
deficiency, 6 with neonatal enteroviral disease, 3 with poliomyelitis
syndromes, 5 with enterovirus infections after bone marrow transplantation, 1
with rhinovirus pneumonia, 3 with encephalitis and 1 with post-polio syndrome)
have been treated with pleconaril in the open-label program. A short course of
pleconaril therapy appears to have produced a sustained clinical and
virological remission of the infection in the majority of these treated
patients, including over 80% of patients with immune deficiency suffering from
chronic meningoencephalitis.
To close..... VPHM has an oral-active molecule that has conclusively been demo'd to interfere with the entry of enterovirus and rhinovirus into cells. The potential markets for this class of molecule are off-scale, relative to what I usually talk about. At some point in time, for a company that effectively addresses this market, a market cap of 220 million will be a hiccup, early in life. If it doubles tomorrow and closes with a market cap of 440 million, are you going to say that it's over-valued? Why? |
