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Biotech / Medical : NNVC - NanoViricides, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: donpat who wrote (10889)	8/18/2018 10:51:25 AM
From: HardToFind	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12873

I found these quotes interesting from your second link: [https://www.nature.com/bioent/2007/071001/full/bioe.2007.5.html] The license or signing fee—essentially the 'cost of admission' for your potential partner—helps you recoup some of your investment. By this logic, there should be no more up-front signing fees, as NNVC is paying for all R&D expenses. TheraCour already recouped their initial expenses when Diwan and TheraCour got controlling interest of the company NNVC with the initial license agreement that included FluCide. (And Yidam argued this happened by a rather deceitful strategy, rather than a straightforward negotiation with the parties financing the company.) In the pharmaceutical industry, the current range for royalty rates is from 2% for a just discovered or engineered compound or material to 20% for a fully developed product approved for sale. The most advanced drug indication NNVC licensed from TheraCour was FluCide, something just discovered and requiring substantial development. NNVC went on to pay for further R&D, animal efficacy and small-animal tox studies, and regulatory preparation costs both within the company and through BCG. The company has announced that as a result of this development FluCide has since undergone design improvements both on the micelle backbone and the ligands, all of which NNVC paid for. It seems like the initial royalty should be a lot closer to 2% than 20%. But Diwan did not negotiate this with the shareholders he got NNVC's initial working capital from; instead, he negotiated it with his new friend and business partner, Eugene Seymour, on behalf of the (then very pissed-off) shareholders. The HerpeCide drug was even less far along when licensed for HSV-1 and HSV-2. There was no drug. The other thing that is interesting is that Diwan has deliberately held back on licensing the shingles indication, something Seymour attempted to get Diwan to do a year or more ago. Instead, Diwan put the unlicensed shingles indication as the lead indication for development (over Seymour's protests that HSV-2 was the better choice). Diwan has directed NNVC to move the shingles indication along, which it appears he wants to license as a "fully developed" drug indication. Most licenses (TheraCour excluded) are simply for a drug, and NNVC has already licensed HerpeCide for HSV-1 & HSV-2 before there even was a drug. For some reason, Diwan feels entitled to more than just the 15% royalty he would get by simply rolling the VZV indication in with the HSV-1 & HSV-2 indications. As an officer of NNVC who is obligated to act in the NNVC shareholders' best interest (or at least fairly with the shareholders), he is directing NNVC to spend its limited resources to add value to this new and unlicensed indication, and to delay the development of the drug's already licensed indications. Diwan & Seymour have previously stated that this practice of delay was to allow the company to assess its interest in a drug indication before having to pay for a license. As the chairman of the NNVC board, this pattern of behavior certainly appears to be rather disingenuous to me.