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The conference was "26th Annual Neonatal & Infant Care Symposium" sponsored by Ohio State University. It was for neonatologists, nurses, & Respiratory therapists who work in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU's) The MD who presented the data on Surfaxin in MAS was Tom Wiswell, an extremely well respected neonatologist who is at Jefferson University in Philly. He was very tight lipped and careful not to mention anything about Discovery Labs, I presume because most of the Lecturer's sign disclosure agreements. I found out about the company by doing a Yahoo search for "Surfaxin". I have since found out (in the process of doing my DD) that Dr. Wiswell is the Secretary of the company and working ~80% of the time for them, in charge of the phase 3 clinical trials. He has had extensive experience in research (used to work for the Army) and was the one who demonstrated the association between Circumcision & decreased risk of urinary tract infection. This was published in the NEJM, something that doesn't happen unless the research is top notch. Getting back to your questions, ARDS is Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, a condition related to surfactant deficiency that develops when the Type 2 pulmonary cells die. This usually is secondary to some massive trauma, shock, smoke inhalation or near drowning. Surfaxin is being studied for this condition, but I'm not too confident it will be effective. The reason being that these patients are extremely ill with multi organ failure, & even though Surfaxin might treat the lung problems, they still have a good chance of dying from kidney failure, heart failure or shock. Premature babies on the other hand have IRDS (Idiopathic Respiratory Distress Syndrome) which is a condition that is isolated to surfactant deficiency because their type 2 cells are not mature enough yet to make surfactant. We know that other Surfactants (Survanta & InfraSurf) are highly effective for this condition and there's a very good chance Surfaxin will be as well. The "IN" that Discovery has is that they have the "Use Patent" for treatment of Meconium Aspiration Syndrome, and I think this is likely what they will get FDA approval for. Once it's FDA approved, it can also be used by MD's to treat IRDS (a much larger market than MAS) Still a risky stock, but considering the upside potential & the fact that it's at close to it's 52 week low, I think worth a shot. This stock will not move (since they don't have any revenues) until something happens with Surfaxin & the FDA. They are on the fast track for the MAS study & with a large multicenter trial, something could happen in 6-12 months. I started accumulating some shares & will continue to do so, as the stock price fluctuates (to take advantage of cost averaging.) Hope this answers your questions & let me know if you need any more info. |
