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Biotech / Medical : Ligand (LGND) Breakout! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hippieslayer who wrote (15613)	2/23/1998 2:03:00 AM
From: Torben Noerup Nielsen	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 32384

>LGND's niche will most likely be two pronged. One: in house >development and testing of certain molecules that ligand finds most >promising to fulfill their own goals. And 2) seeding out other >promising molecules to Big Pharmas for collaborative agreements. I am pretty sure that they will do this. As far as I am aware, it is an innovative business model and it can only be pursued by a biotech with a broad pipeline based on fundamental cellular processes. In this LGND qualifies and that makes the company rather different from the run of the mill biotech. Note also that LGND has already been recognized for innovative financing arrangements (remember ALRIZ; Robinson got an award for that arrangement). I find such little details comforting when people are expressing discontent with LGND management. I happen to think they are on the ball and doing their job quite well. Take a look at a lot of the small biotechs out there. Many of them have one product or one fairly narrow technology. LGND doesn't fall in that category. If you surveyed the biotechs of today, you would likely also find a lot that are working on anti-viral drugs. I tend to remove those companies from my horizon immediately. This is for a couple of reasons. First off, viruses are incredibly difficult to kill. This is especially so since they aren't alive in the first place! Never forget that a virus acts by taking over the normal cellular machinery for its own purposes. Unfortunately, there are very few places in the chain of viral replication where virus specific mechanisms come into play and it is very difficult to target those. To the best of my knowledge, the only way we have ever been able to consistently win against any serious virus is by marshalling the far superior forces of the human immune system ahead of the arrival of the virus; i.e., using vaccines. Based on my limited knowledge, I regard cancer as an easier target than a virus. Second, a lot of the anti-viral work is now done targeting HIV in order to cure AIDS. What bothers me about that is that we already know how to eradicate AIDS. All it takes is standard public health measures. AIDS is delicate as viruses go and it cannot survive outside of a very sheltered environment. Cancer is a lot worse in my mind. >PS, be careful of people who try to use the price of one company's >stock to justify the theoretical and future value of another corps >stock price. It's pure conjecture that has no basis for discussion. Not to worry; I am not trying to figure out where LGND will go based on that. That said, if LGND should happen to announce in the next 6-12 months that they have halted a breast cancer trial using Targretin in combination with something else on ethical grounds; i.e., the cure rate exceeded 70%, then all bets are off. Then you'd all have an opportunity to find out how powerful the breast cancer lobby is.... My private speculation is that the drug would make it through the FDA in record time. Cheers, Torben