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Biotech / Medical : ARRIS - Another partner -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (275)	12/4/1997 1:33:00 AM
From: John Dwyer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 353

Hi Steve, The stock won't move because big investors don't see how this translates into profits. I could list a dozen of companies with great technology platforms that do not get much respect. At least we can begin to evaluate Arris' platform... before this all we had was hype. I don't know what else I can add to the basic description of Delta that appeared in the release. There are two points where I think Delta offers a great advantage over traditional drug design. First, it allows a means by which to target something away from the active site. The active site of all serine proteases is very similar so specificity is tough to obtain. However, there is less similarity between these proteins at sites further away. If you can design a drug that can "tickle" these areas you have a chance of distinguishing between different serine proteases. Second, traditional drugs are hard to optimize once you find one - believe me, I know! We just don't understand how all of the macromolecular forces add together to make one molecule "stick" to another. We can make educated guesses, but usually the best you can do (I'm speaking generally now) is make it bind 10-100 times tighter. Metal binding is a little better understood (in terms of coordination, etc) and metals bind very tightly. The binding of a metal, in conjunction with the rest of the inhibitor, gives you a big bang for your buck. They say a thousand times better... if this is true it would be tremendous. I'm still not clear on all the details but this approach seems promising. I haven't had a chance to read the patent yet. Even if it not air-tight, this is still a good platform technology. I have always been put-off by their secrecy with Delta... I don't like to invest in hype. I like it but I still don't understand how it works in vivo. I will say this... the platform seems pretty cheap at these levels. Hope this helps John