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Biotech / Medical : ArQule -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (154)	2/3/1998 2:17:00 AM
From: William Nelson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 399

Well, I don't know that they have "everything bagged", but I think they must be doing something somewhat sophisticated or their partners (professional biochemists) would not pay them money and the patent office would not issue them patents. To me the most positive sign is the 2nd renewal from Abbot labs. The most negative sign is the lack of contracts from the big pharmas. One new partner and a patent on their core methodology this month... this is surely positive news. Stock has already responded.

To: ahhaha who wrote (154)	2/3/1998 11:42:00 AM
From: scaram(o)uche	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 399

ahhaha: I may have stopped posting, but the percentage of my portfolio in ARQL has never been greater. I agree, largely, with your monkey rationale. However, combichem need not be an isolated procedure. As it evolves to an art that is guided by DNA sequence (the direction that ARQL/Curagen and others are pointing at), I want to own the companies that are ahead on the learning curve. Until then, a combo of labor-intensive (monkey) chemistry and SBD at ARQL is generating leads. Your comments are appreciated. No question in my mind, SBD is a proven technology that is worthy of a timely investment. IMO, however, the next level of sophistication is no more than five years away, and the "directed array" concept puts ARQL way up on learning curve. There are two questions.... (1) to what degree, if any, will they participate in the pharma market, year 2005 and beyond, and (2) how will they bridge the revenue gap in the next few years? You're correct... current state of the art is SBD-directed chemistry. Fortunately, ARQL is good at this game and there are lots of companies out there with biological targets that aren't. The business plan is risky but alive. Some biotech investors like to construct a portfolio of potential 10-baggers, and bail from companies that don't stay on track. It works. I've proven that. Cheers! Rick

To: ahhaha who wrote (154)	2/4/1998 2:36:00 AM
From: John Dwyer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 399

My, my... this _is_ flame-bait! Look, in principle I agree with what you are saying. Big pharma is paying peanuts for glorified fishing expeditions using a technology that is largely unproven. However, screening of compound libraries has been going on for almost 100 years and has produced about 99% of all drugs on the market today. It is the bread and butter of big pharma and so I think that companies like ARQL and PCOP will always find partners. Your example about the monkeys applies to rational drug design as well. In this case, I'm the monkey. I look at a structure and try and decide what changes I can make to a peptide to make it bind better... I look and look and look and then when I think I've got it, the damn thing doesn't bind. So then I do phage display (combichem of sorts) and presto, a nanomolar binder where the changes are subtle and complicated. This is why screening can be so powerful. It doesn't even have to produce a drug. Lets say ten of the best hits have the same functional group... this gives you information that can be used for rational design of what will be the final compound. If we can get this info cheaply from ARQL or PCOP, then why not? I view ARQL as sort of a contract screening outfit. Others may balk at this, but until they have a well-developed and internally funded research program, they are essentially screening for other people. So they are not biotech and their science is not science per se, but rather a technology. What you have to evaluate is whether their business model will eventually generate a positive cash flow. I think so. Is there risk? Big time. Is this a no-brainer? No way. I think John DC's point is that the risk of disaster _right now_ is less than the chance for good news (deals, etc). ARQL is the hot company right now and combichem is still a pretty hot area. When I first started following combichem, PCOP was the only real player that was public and as such it was a juicy takeover candidate. I can't help but wonder if ARQL's strength this week is related to this type of speculation. John PS. It is nice to have some opposing views on some of these threads.