Dear Omer,
Even if your posts are long one's, they are worth it. As you said I think too many people are looking on day by day basis. And that is supporting momentum players (in both directions).
- By the way, even without FDA approval, could you send me your mother's recipe for the chicken soup? ;-) -
I think we should not expect too much from unblinding PhII data. If the stock will react strongly (upwards), we all can be happy. But the actual momentum for biotech and PARS is not the best, so it still can need further time before we are going to see what we all want: rising prices far above the $ 4 level.
One important factor is the interest of further investors. We are all invested, some of us (including myself) have PARS as their #1 investment. Even if we are going to buy further on - what we do - , we won't be able to lift the stock price in new territory. Without "fresh" investors we will have to be patient.
With unblinding HU211-data, a new era could start, but it do not have to. That the chance is good shows todays article in WSJ:
By Stephen J. Glain
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
TEL AVIV -- Haim Aviv sees health, and wealth, in a drug patterned after a hallucinogen that could neutralize the effects of nerve gas and head injuries.
Mr. Aviv is the chairman of Pharmos Ltd., an Israeli biotechnology concern that has developed a drug known as dexanabinol. It is based on the same molecular structure as the active ingredient in marijuana, but has no intoxicating effect. If dexanabinol receives Food and Drug Administration approval, according to Pharmos and U.S. military scientists studying the drug, it could be the most potent treatment available for brain trauma, which afflicts an estimated 230,000 people a year.
"Basically, we took cannabis molecules and changed them so they protect nerve cells from dying," Mr. Aviv says.
Pharmos, which trades on the Nasdaq Stock Market, is typical of the promising companies that are sprouting up in Israel's booming high-tech sector. The biotech company has drawn particular attention in the U.S. Its unusual treatments are the sort of agents that U.S. military planners are seeking because of the looming threat of attack from unconventional weapons by hostile states, such as Iraq, and by freelance terrorist groups, such as the Aum cult, which nerve-gassed the Tokyo subways in 1995.
The Pentagon is aggressively pursuing antidotes and vaccines to protect troops from seizures that accompany nerve-gas and biological attacks. The U.S. government is considering stockpiling such drugs for the civilian population, which could cost billions of dollars. "We need to do further testing on animals," says Margaret G. Filbert of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute. But the Pharmos drug "is very promising," she says.
Pharmos's Mr. Aviv, who emigrated to Israel from Romania at the age of 10 in 1950, launched the company in 1991 with $400,000 of his own money. A year later, he raised $12 million from friends, then merged Pharmos into a larger, U.S. company, which facilitated the Nasdaq listing and expanded Pharmos's total capitalization to $70 million. As with other biotech companies, Pharmos's research is financed largely by clients and institutions, and the company has little revenue. It hopes to bolster its sales through a marketing agreement with Bausch & Lomb Inc., the Rochester, N.Y., eye-care company.
The success of Pharmos's other major products, anti-inflammatory drugs that have recently hit the market, would pale in comparison with the impact of an effective nerve-gas treatment. Mr. Aviv was in Maryland during the 1992 Gulf War, lecturing about dexanabinol to U.S. Army officers, when Iraqi missiles rained on Tel Aviv. Though the attacks were conventional, they hardened the Pentagon's interest in a compound that could respond to toxic attacks. (The U.S. Army wouldn't divulge its financial arrangements with Pharmos, saying the Army's research budget is proprietary.)
Existing treatment for nerve-gas exposure is limited to injections of various antidotes immediately after exposure. That is where the marijuana-patterned dexanabinol, developed several years ago at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and also known as HU211, may offer an important advantage.
Head trauma releases calcium into the brain cells at an unnatural rate. HU211, which is modeled on THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, is one of the few nontoxic compounds under development that in tests has limited calcium or oxygen overflow for several minutes after trauma is experienced. It also appears to impede the brain-cell deterioration from the seizures that accompany a nerve-gas attack. Pharmos says it also expects to market dexanabinol for treatment of stroke and Alzheimer's disease.
HU211 was developed by Raphael Mechoulam, a pioneer in applying hallucinogenic drugs for medicinal purposes.
Dr. Mechoulam says it took three years to isolate HU211, using pigs' brains. "Of course, the difficult part is in testing it" as a nerve-gas antidote on humans, he says.
So far, the U.S. Army has been limiting its nerve-gas tests to lab rats. In a study conducted by Dr. Filbert, brain damage to lab rats exposed to nerve gas and treated with dexanabinol five minutes later was reduced by 75%. But HU211 has been tested on human victims of brain damage from accidents. A test sample of 67 head-trauma victims treated with the drug and a placebo has produced a mortality rate of 12%, an encouraging rate given the severity of some of the cases, Dr. Filbert says. The results of the clinical trial are expected to be released next month, and if they pass muster, FDA approval could be obtained within the next two years.
(END) DOW JONES NEWS 09-27-98
09:04 PM
Copyright 1998 Dow Jones & Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
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