What the heck, I'm awake. Turn on CNBC, tune in SI, and click on the respond button.
Once again you are so literate as to border on the incomprehensible. My wife says I should ignore you, my old acquaintance, but on the off chance that someone else is still living in the dark ages I shall try to enlighten you, at least in my own layman kind of way.
In your home Boston area there probably is quite a lot of scepticism concerning monoclonal antibodies. Look at Seragen's near takedown of Boston U.'s endowment. Was it John Silber's stubbornness, misplaced greed, or a fund-raising inability on SRGN's behalf? Whatever it was Lilly certainly cherrypicked them. It may have just been for the 150 million tax loss but the small cell lung fusion protein in P III is interesting. TCLN has five fusion proteins awaiting clinicals. Boston's other biomab blowup is Immunogen (whose largest shareholder was the Harvard endowment, not that they would miss it). Their monoclonal death knell was sounded years ago when a failure to block ricin in liver killed two patients in a P II (call it anecdotal but it was discussed at an FDA meeting). The stock of each of these firms was over $15, now combined they don't break $2. No wonder that investors in your area are down on monoclonals. Fortunately successful companies in NJ, Cal, Texas, Washington, the UK, Israel, etc. allay that sentiment.
Boston attention is fixated on the buzzword in biotech - angiogenesis. It was discovered by Harvard's Judah Folkman, who stubbornly persisted in his belief for 30 years until proven right. Folkman's colleague Harold F. Dvorak has patented the most successful product in angio - vascular endothelial growth factor, or vegf. The vegf gene is injected into muscle where it makes a protein and creates a new artery thus bypassing a clogged or closed artery. Vegf was the primary asset in a 100 million license between Warner Lambert and private Genvec. Dr. Dvorak, who is on Techniclone's Scientific Advisory Board, has licensed exclusive use of vegf to TCLN for therapeutic applications in cancer. The vegf gene is used to induce clotting within the vasculature of a solid tumor, thus starving and thereby killing the tumor. In animal studies this has a 90% success rate. The increased necrosis makes a more suitable target for TNT, of course, and it is predicted by Cambridge Antibody Technology that the VTA/TNT combo will dominate solid tumor therapy for 20 years. Or at least Greg Winter's team (CAT) thinks so. They are the ones who introduced Peregrine to Techniclone, proposing that if they didn't merge they would be competing for two decades. I am told that the patent estate for the VTA's and TNT are rock solid.
This is absolutely the cutting edge in solid tumor therapy theory and I think the window of opportunity is wide open for Techniclone. This, the VTA technology, is the big license that Dr. Bonfiglio has been talking about. TNT is not for sale.
FWIW, when the Legeres start selling I will be tendering to the same offer, whatever it is. As for now I am still buying. THIS time frame is a window of opportunity.
I thought I'd answer now because I won't be on the net this weekend, time to haul the boats. Now it's time to read the papers.
Good morning, all. |
