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Biotech / Medical : The thread of life -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (292)	3/23/2002 1:27:00 PM
From: Mike McFarland	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1336

Well you know me, I tend to stick with my bets, several have been a little stinky of late. I think it is not a bad thing to admit your stinkers, helps clear the air, ha! My biggest stinkpot: Genset...and I still have quite a few shares, my cost is probably something like $7, uggh! I think it is not such a bad price down here at $2, but I will not add to my losing position. I am willing to see if Cohen and Pernet can still pull something off, this is nothing more than following, say, Venter around over here in the US. Although since he left Celera, I guess that is out for now. And I've not given up hope in Famoxin either! The following post might be worth a look, found it on the Yahoo thread. I know you have already done some DD on the molecule--I seem to remember that you went to a presentation. And you avoided the shares when they still had genome.com priced in them. I'd guessed that $10/share had the "genomics" hype removed, whoops. Anyway, here is the Yahoo post worth a gander: My two cents by: madflyscientist 03/07/02 03:02 pm Msg: 1569 of 1603 I do not have any inside information about or relationship with Genset, but I am one of the researchers that has published on this protein, and I have a few scientific clarifications on published information to make, and impressions of business developments that have been announced publicly. On the business end, Genset just sold their oligonucleotide division for 25M, and my guess is that this is to generate capital so they can start clinical trials on famoxin. This is good and bad--they have to get these trials going if they're going to make a run of it, but on the other hand, the oligos were the only product they were actively selling. In terms of the PR lockdown, my guess is that they are being quiet because they are in the process of trying to get bought, in which case they can't talk about much. On the science side, I have a few observations. One of the hurdles I think they have is production of famoxin, which they do in bacteria. Although its possible to produce large quantities this way, the doses required are equally large (at least in mice). This makes for an expensive and challenging technical problem. On their website I found want ads for a protein chemist experienced with industrial-scale protein production, and I don't think they'll have an easy time finding a good one. On the theoretical side, I was at first very skeptical that famoxin would work as a ligand drug. DrBio is wrong when he says that famoxin is natural and axokine is not. They are both derivatives of the proteins found in animals. Although they are both close to being the same, they are not. The paper by Lodish had one figure showing the existence of something like famoxin, but since that paper I have not heard any of the groups working on this reproducing this result. I can tell you this problem is being actively worked on. Putting my skepticism aside, I recently attended a scientific conference where the Kadowaki lab presented initial data concerning a transgenic mouse overexpressing a famoxin-like version of adiponectin. In lay terms, they put a famoxin gene into the mouse so that its own tissues produce and secrete famoxin (famoxin--not adiponectin) into the blood. When they bred these mice with a mouse type that is genetically obese and diabetic, it dramatically improved these mice's health (they were less obese and less diabetic). Although it is difficult to explain why these results are more convincing than previous papers, it is my opinion that this is the first finding that nails the potential therapeutic efficacy of famoxin.