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Biotech / Medical : Biotechnology Value Fund, L.P. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Miljenko Zuanic who wrote (295)	10/11/1998 4:25:00 PM
From: scaram(o)uche	Respond to of 4974

MZ, BJ, others...... Just some quick comments, without detail (or, perhaps, sufficient background research, so take them for what they're worth)..... MLNM seems to have had success in defining milestones such that money keeps flowing across the labs. I'll be very surprised if, when we look up in two years, we haven't seen $25 million or so from "target delivery" Bayer milestones. The danger in this relationship is Wuppertal..... despite an early start, Bayer has been a joke thus far in biotech. Can they effectively manage any riches which head their direction? GLFD.... the deal is obviously structured to give them "breakthrough to pharma" status if AMGN gets the job done. It means that they are headed for further dilution, and this might be sticky if financing remains problematic. I would have structured the deal in a similar fashion. NRGN chemistry..... Penner runs his company like a small pharma. They are up to their eyeballs in receptor technology, generating a million compounds per year and screening the same number of compounds per month. I noticed them early due to a focus on no-B.S. science and scientists and on automation when automation wasn't popular. The Cubist deal is just the beginning of NRGN excursions into non-neuro stuff, too. I regard the repeated pullbacks from clinic to preclinical to be a reflection of target validation. Neuro has been hit hard, just at a time when huge successes are around the corner. Markets will be rewritten, just as Prozac expanded the depression market 10-fold. We've seen neuro get slaughtered due to its association with hype and companies that were working on targets that someone pulled out of thin air. Plenty of good work is now maturing with targets that are validated up their wazoo. IMO, the top is going to blow off of neuro. Further IMO, it is simply insane that mergers have not occurred, that companies have not been created during this funding slump which would have a pipeline a mile wide.