Well here is what I've scrounged up so far on Isis.
I'll wont say much about 2302, and Isis' Vitravene,
since this is a thread for Cancer related stuff. Oh,
I will say that although I only went through the March
biofind chat, there was a point made about 2302 (the
ICAM-1 inhibitor I think it is) and it stuck in my head--
(hehe, stuck...) 2302 is going up against an awful lot
of MAb's, I think the antibodies have a sizeable lead,
but just my gut reaction, this is biotech investing
101, freshman year, second day of class:-) From what
I can tell Vitravene is NOT what you would call a
wildly successful drug--and somebody thought that
might have played a role in the Cowen downgrade.
Isis is into antisense and as aquired some IP in
antisense from a couple other companies in the last
year. It is trading at a fairly large multiple to book
value, especially when you consider the firesale that
is goint on elsewhere in the sector--so if you're like
me (lost in a sea of cheap biotechs, and mostly trying
to avoid the landmines) you might want to avoid this one.
On the other hand, I gauged sentiment from the thread
here on SI and the Yahoo! ISIP thread, it is decidedly
negative--or at least the enthusiasm over antisense
has been knocked out of the crowd--that is often not
a bad time to at least get your first "third" if you
like something, the chart does not seem to be dropping
anymore. That said, you can almost always wait a day,
watch the chart, and pay what you one on these lately,
part of the sector being ignored is that if any fund
wants to dump some shares, whooof!
I'd say there is good evidence that the company will not
do a death spiral type of financing, the letter from the
CEO on their website is reassuring--so maybe it will
be debt or something. What it really looks like to me
is as if Isis has some interesting leads, and they
need the cash to get them far enough along to attract
partners--it was pointed out however that maybe the
company wants to have the cash secured so it can deal
from a position of strength while they try to attract a
partner for one of their compounds.
Okay, let's see what looks interesting of late...
In the aacr abstracts, Isis shows they have a
Ras antisense oligonucleotide -- ISIS 2503.
Blocks ras signaling in mammalian cells.
They ahve a second generation antisense oligonucleotide --
ISIS 16009 which is being investigated in vitro against
leukaemia cell lines
From another abstract I found something about reduction in mouse liver
Bcl-x mRNA levels following intraperitoneal administration of
ISIS 15999 and ISIS 16009.
They had a bit about radiotherapeutic efficacy and a
antisense raf oligodeoxyribonucleotide -- ISIS 5132
There is a broad sounding abstract about ASO's and various cell
signaling molecules, seems like very early stuff to me, but
who knows how much is hidden from web surfers versus how much
they give out at these meetings.
There were two more abstracts which were more specific and
since it might as well have been written in greek, I wont
say anything here about those two.
My first little dip in the pool, and mainly I want to just
come back when the water is a little warmer--maybe in May
I will be interested, especially if this one is down some
more in price in a few weeks.
--Mike |
