>> how about BPUR <<
DAK,
I've paid some attention to the "blood substitute" (or "oxygen therapeutic") companies for a while, because there will be a huge, absolutely humungous, market for an oxygen carrier that (1) has a multi-year shelf life rather than the 4-6 weeks of whole blood, (2) doesn't require the delays (and potential liabilities) of blood typing, (3) doesn't require refrigeration, and (4) avoids worries about viral, bacterial and prion contamination. These advantages would make it possible, inter alia, to administer the stuff more quickly when needed, to carry the blood substitute in ambulances, to stock it in third world clinics, military field hospitals, etc. Huge potential market. I've looked over the years at SMTG (long since bought out by BAX, which still has something of a live project in SMTG's 2d generation genetically-engineered hemoglobin -- the last BAX annual report devoted a whole sentence to it), NFLD, ALLP, BPUR and HMSL, all making progress in various ways and aimed at various niches (of which ALLP's is the narrowest).
BPUR may well be the first to get FDA approval for an oxygen therapeutic (NFLD would disagree, but they had a setback Monday, and I've always been uncomfortable with NFLD's rather hype-sounding rhetoric).
I had a small position in BPUR and got out at about 23 in early September. This was after the Phase 3 results for Hemopure were summarized somewhat sketchily (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010827/nem021.html )and TSC had a go at them, quoting a number of doctors who muttered about adverse events, insufficient disclosure of the results, etc.
It wasn't clear to me that TSC's attack added up to much, and felt like one of the periodic TSC-as-mouthpiece-for-shorts jobs, but I got out, on the considerations:
(1) TSC sometimes gets it right;
(2) the FDA, increasingly cautious especially about new classes of therapeutics, might well be pretty hard to please in this area;
(3) BPUR, a one-trick pony, had therefore pretty high risk;
(4) against that risk, the rewards are more muted than the potential size of market might suggest. Hemopure is difficult and expensive to make, and BPUR needed to spend several hundred million bucks to build a plant to make more than the moderate amounts they can now make (in a small plant now making essentially the same product mostly for veterinary use); and even when the planned big plant (in North Carolina, I think) was complete in 2004 or 2005, it would produce only about 500,000 units annually. (The details are from memory and a bit fuzzy, but I think the right ballpark.)
This meant to me that the downside risk from trouble at the FDA far outweighed the potential rewards of a fairly gently-sloping rampup of sales of Hemopure. Lots of things had, I thought, better risk/reward rations at that point.
Hope this helps.
--RCM |
