ABSC's technology as stated in its SEC filing:
Aurora's proprietary fluorescent assay technologies are being used today to facilitate drug discovery by the Company's collaborators and in the Company's existing high throughput screening system. Aurora's portfolio of fluorescent assay technologies is designed to enable screening of compounds against nearly all major classes of human drug targets, including receptors, ion channels and enzymes, in most therapeutic areas. The Company's fluorescent assay technologies
are highly sensitive, and are designed to permit more rapid screen development and the development of miniaturized assays important for cost-effective high throughput screening. Additionally, many of the Company's screens are being designed to be performed with living mammalian cells to better model human disease processes.
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What I gather from all the information is that their specific targets are large molecules, multiple subunit proteins, like ion channels. As for IGEN's technology, they are targetting mostly small molecules of low molecule weight, peptides, hormones, neurotransmitters. They also focus on DNA/RNA (which are high molecular weight..but detection assays for those are quite different from detecting other substances).
both companies focus on developing fast and effective means of screening, detection, information compilation, and better ways to gather and sort data for processing. The use of computers and databases in this way and relatively new to the industry (e.g., bioinformatics) and is still being developed and improved upon.
This sort of large scale / high throughput screening method is relatively cheap ...thus once the company has developed an effective method/system, profit margins are incredibly high. Subscribing, purchasing, or licensing these screening systems are dirt cheap for pharma's and biotechs who develop drugs or do any work involved in pharmacology.
I noticed in the SEC filings that the systems haven't really been utilized in "large operations" (for either IGEN or ABSC)...indicating that neither company knows if their system will really work. I believe that corporate management and organization are the factors that will ultimately determine whether or not these systems work...not the technology itself...the technology is already there...the people who run the companies just need to get their ass in gear and things will work. The technology is really simple from a scientific standpoint...its pretty basic stuff they are implementing but its hard to make things work if you are running 100,000 samples or more a day and you want to keep the cost for each sample at under $1. that's what these companies are aiming to do. A large pharma buys one of their systems which is usually a large machine or set of machines and a protocol and they hire 1 person to operate it and that machine cranks out enormous amounts of data that would take 100 people to do if the assays were done by hand. Then seeing that the model works, the company buys 15 more units and hires a dozen more people, and everyone's happy :)
I think ABSC's systems will work because they have an excellent management team and their board of directors include people who have first hand experience and knowledge with high-throughput systems which have generated incredible revenues for other companies.
as for competition between companies, I really don't see it. There are a zillion molecules you can target in the human body, and each of these companies are only targeting a handful right now...there's plenty to go around.
What makes ABSC's tech unique is that they are targeting Calcium channels (and probably other ion channels)...these type of channels are everywhere in the human body and many receptors are ion dependent and many receptors are variable in structure. What this means is that ABSC can generate systems to target these different molecules and make a buttload of money off of pharms who are targetting these receptors in hopes of drug discovery. You can literally put out thousands of different drugs that are specific for these receptors and have different actions upon interaction. There's alot of potential for ABSC as long as it gets the clients....which it currently does and will likely to get more in the near future.
I am least worried about the 180 lockout...I think that insiders are not ready to dump any shares at $13-15 because they really won't make much money from it and they have confidence in the company and they were in the issue to make a huge amount of money in the first place. And those who bought in at $10-11...I really don't see them dumping the stock either...they are in it long to try for the 10 bagger...which I think is possible especially since only a few million shares are floating around.
-JW |
