Herc,
There's good reason you encountered so much cynicism about Arqule. It been a rough year or so for them and many shareholders feel misled. Arqule mgt was either incredibly naive about drug development or they were dishonest. One, Arql mgt claimed several Arql derived compounds would be in the clinic by now and we're still waiting for the first. A second issue was the well timed sales by the Chairman. A third issue is their investor relations and the arrogant s.o.b. they have for a CFO (I assume he'll read this).
Taking a minimally defined drug from combichem and getting a drug to market is not a simple process. Its not as easy as screening a library, getting a hit, putting the drug into humans and getting approval. They spoke of 50+ leads derived from their libraries during their road show several years ago, yet not one is in the clinic at this time.
Big pharmas need (or the long term need) for outside combichem is questionable. The sad fact is that its moving more and more towards straight library purchases and no attached royalties (or very low single digit), which will not bode well for the initial Arqule business model of "Arqule Inside." In fact, I believe the initial Arqule model is now dead. Frankly, I suspect this is how they nailed down the Pfizer deal (nice upfront pmt, but no royalties). The progress in the MTC, AHP and ABT deals has been murky. Arqule hasn't said a peep about them in ages other than to say that the MTC revenues were delayed by their merger with AHP. Well, the merger collapsed almost a year ago, so why haven't these revenues been made up?
In theory you are right, there is a lot of Sepracor like qualities: passing off a multitude of drug candidates to partners etc. The reality has been and will continue to be far from it.
I made money in Arqule and I lost money in Arqule and now I am on the sidelines. |
