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Hi Potnak/Aber/Warthog - this is the point I was making re perceived verses actual benefit to a company. We're all invested in a company that needs to play its cards close to its chest - that's the nature of any IP-based company. So we have to accept that there are things the BoD maybe want to say but can't e.g. "we've created patented molecules and are actively in clinical trials yet our own share holdings are worth fekk all compared to the highs of yesteryear - wtf!?" or "we'd like to tell shareholders that the companies waiting for our 1b data are AZ, Pfizer and GSK - so we're talking major players rather than third division wannabes - but we can't."
So yes, Parker is paid a whopping amount but he's hopefully opened doors we punters will never hear about due to the nature of the business.
If you want a safer investment, get a couple of percent from your local bank or as Clint Eastwood once said, "If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster".
Tim & John appear pretty frugal so they must feel Parker's renummeration (see below) is worth it. As the sp tumbles I try to remind myself that there can be a huge gulf between perceived and real benefits when it comes to what someone contributes to a business, especially when we're dealing in the opaque world of big pharma. Does every conversation come with an NDA attached - "morning, how was your weekend?", "I'll need you to sign this NDA before I tell you" etc.
I've no idea what Parker does on a day to day basis as he isn't an executive director but I guess T&J must see some benefit to having him onboard.
The direct link to last year's accounts is too long so just open the file via https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/05147578/filing-history
Page 14 should have a few folks grinding their teeth.
No idea if any of the HNW peeps are still interested/invested here but I wonder if one or two of them are waiting for the sp to hit rock bottom before they step in to offer funds in order to pay off RF and help turn the sp around, not to mention greatly reducing their average and ultimately benefiting massively if things all pan out.
I presume people become a HNWI through playing the long game.
More wishful thinking available upon request.
Hi Potnak - yes, I recall but it seems almost out of the realms of science fiction for them to return it then take it back!
The pharma landscape can change overnight so why wouldn't Sierra/GSK now decide actually 737 might have some legs?
Apart from the RF deal, not knowing what's really going on with 737 is working against the sp until we know how 1801 is doing. What I can guarantee though is the sp will recover before May. Why? Well that's when I should have more funds available and my luck dictates the sp rises whenever I'm in a position to buy. If I can average down I won't feel so bad about currently being so underwater here (I'm trying to evolve gills with no luck).
The Nucleus Network last advertised for volunteers at the start of January. Given the patient screening time followed by the post-absorbtion monitoring, at a pinch we might hear early March if the 1a phase is complete but we will then need to wait for the full safety review - how long is that piece of string? The BoD will be as much in the dark about current results as we are since the trial remains double-blind until all data is collated. So until then I doubt we'll won't hear about the trial apart from it's progressing.
As for 737, it's anyone's guess. For all we know it's back with Sierra - as I recall it was a merger with GSK (not a takeover) so does that suggest Sierra still exists in some form? If so, they might be considered 'private' in the sense that they are shielded from the outside world by GSK. The link below was updated on 8th Feb but I think the site uses AI to scrape the net for info so probably not as accurate as it could be.
https://synapse.patsnap.com/drug/32bdb04583b043818d7808672c8fa1c6
Without knowing the contents of the license agreement, the value of the announced milestones appears almost too similar to the Sierra deal. It's almost as if they are picking up where they left off. Other conspiracy theories are available.
From RGO's trading update at the end of Jan - https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/RGO/trading-update-t4yqiwq8p2ymtkv.html
"We are disappointed with how some of our investments have performed in recent months, which has clearly been exacerbated by the general difficulties in financial markets and the economy as a whole. Against this background, RGO has continued to continue to maintain a prudent cash balance."
What none of us know is how many SAR shares RF have sold. For all we know it's been one or more large holders selling off which has knackered our sp. Unless the BoD can tell us exactly the state of play then we're reduced to squabbling over what if's.
If RF are basically just a loan shark, who lends to them if they don't have the cash to meet their contracted liabilities?!
To change the sp direction we either need new funding where the investor intends hanging around until our compounds make us money or news on the 737 deal. If the licensee has a NDA with the Pioneer Fund then even our BoD might not know who it is. However if they do know but can't tell us directly, they could always draw our attention to an exciting new trial using a CHK1 inhibitor called 'X' which appears to work in a similar way to 737, nudge nudge, wink wink.
Regarding RF, they don't appear to be doing so well - https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/RGO/trading-update-t4yqiwq8p2ymtkv.html
As for Potnak's suggestion that it's never a good strategy to average down, Warren Buffett takes a different stance - if you would buy shares at $1 and the price drops but the business fundamentals haven't changed then why wouldn't you also buy at 50cents?
And to follow Mayhem's 'giving birth' analogy, those who have witnessed the miracle of birth often describe it as like watching your favourite pub burn down. Glad I gave up drinking years ago.
Hi Krusty - I'm keeping an eye on the websites below to see if 737 gets renamed. However since it's now with a private company, they could feasibly keep things in-house and we wouldn't know what's going on. If we knew who it was it might attract more investment here.
https://synapse.patsnap.com/drug/32bdb04583b043818d7808672c8fa1c6
https://adisinsight.springer.com/drugs/800045596
The Q&A tab wasn't there when the notification e-mail went out this morning. Glad they responded to all of my questions.
Whilst the current sp is dire and I feel that could be remedied to a large degree if we knew who the 737 licensee was - X is delighted to announce the addition of 737 to its pipeline and are already designing clinical studies etc. etc.
So from what's said in the written answers, is it possible that once 1801 1a results are known, they MIGHT consider lowering the HNW warrant prices (assuming the HNWs are still interested) with any new funds going towards getting shot of RF?
Wishful thinking? Quite possibly.
I tried ages ago and didn't even get acknowledged. A quality set up.
In other news, looks like Bigeasy's post suggesting PH are shorting us has been removed.
Crumbs Warthog, I only use Bolli to get the hard to shift dirt off. I then buff to a fine sheen using a pair of panda's ears.
Must dash or this evening's golden eagle will be burnt to a crisp. Tally-ho.
Hi Gauteng - I couldn't possibly say.
Anyway, must go and wipe down the interior of the Bugatti, that caviar gets everywhere.
Hi PCS - and if this all pays off we could all meet up somewhere, perhaps in a hotel with three corners ;-)
(Might be too cryptic for some!)
There are pro's and con's to each approach whether it's pure TYK2 or TYK2/JAK1 or whatever and as others have pointed out, there's room for each in the market.
As JR & TM have said, they might not be the best biologists but they are very good chemists and that's what you want when designing a new compound. Just the right amount of JAK1 is essential here to maximise selectivity over pure TYK2. It's a bit like those expert sushi chefs preparing blowfish - the aim is to leave just enough of the deadly toxin in the dish so you get a slight tingle on the lips but not so much that it kills you.
When people complain that the BoD are taking too long to get through tox trials etc., well there is a reason why they take their time - we'll probably only get one chance with this so it has to prove it meets all of the design specifications along the way.
A fair point Potnak, though I did stress that the connection I was making might not be 100% sound however Boundless does tick some boxes (private company, prior knowledge of 737 etc.) so just because they have one CHK1 doesn't mean they wouldn't pick up another for a different indication especially if they know its been successful in P2 trials. Perhaps as you've suggest, the licensee wants a fast turnaround in order to make a quick return on their investment.
Unfortunately this is the game we have to play until someone officially announces who the licensee is.
Hi Fanti - it depends what you mean by access. Without reading the patents, it's probably a case of them wanting to patent methods of treatment that include CHK1 inhibitors and therefore they include mention of SRA737 in much the same way as Sierra did, see below (specifically the Applicant name or Assignee name for each patent)
https://patents.justia.com/search?q=sra737
As for accessing 737, you can buy it off the shelf for research purposes from a variety of suppliers - https://www.selleckchem.com/products/cct245737.html
So anyone could be using it in their lab on mice and they don't have to announce it but you can find enough research papers online to show a variety of labs have published their work with 737 in combo with other treatments - I've posted about Chinese labs using 737 with ultrasound to target breast cancer and so on.
As I said in my initial post, just because there appears to be a strong link doesn't mean it's 100% accurate - just because I heard the sound of hooves doesn't mean we'll see some horses, it could be zebras instead!
Don't know why I didn't go further down the rabbit hole last night - searching the USPTO website for 'Boundless' AND 'SRA737' shows 9 patents, 8 of which were published last year when 737 was on the market.
It's almost as if Boundless Bio were planning for the future.
It's easy to think you're seeing strong connections between things when the reality is it's just a coincidence so I hope none of you spend too much time exploring what follows (unless you're Citizen!)
Open the link to the US public patent search site - https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/static/pages/ppubsbasic.html
In the Basic Search box just search 'everything' for SRA737 and you should get 113 records (the latest of which was published on the 4th Jan 2024).
Now the fun begins. Looking down the list of inventor names I thought I recognised the name Christian Hassig. I entered the corresponding patent number (US-20230272485-A1) into the Google Patents search engine and got this result -
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230272485A1/en?oq=US-20230272485-A1
SRA737 gets a mention 13 times throughout the paper - hardly a big deal as it gets a mention in each of the other 112 papers in the original search. Anyway, the patent is allocated to some outfit called Boundless Bio Inc where Hassig now works. That would be the same Hassig who worked for Sierra Oncology as Chief Scientific Officer. It's a small world.
https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/boundless-bio-appoints-christian-hassig-ph-d-as-chief-scientific-officer/
And did I mention Boundless Bio appear to be a private company? Scroll down to the 'Investors' part of the page https://boundlessbio.com/who-we-are
Anyway if Boundless Bio turn out to be the new licensee owners of 737 I win the internet for a day though as I said, it's easy to see connections that aren't really there!
Just a quick update - the Regulating Study no longer shows up on the main Nucleus Network recruitment page so it's still progressing nicely. It's just annoying that they don't update the trial docs to indicate how many volunteers have been recruited; that way we'd know how close we are to the endpoint.
If anyone's in the process of contacting TM about anything, it might be worth a gentle nudge re updating the docs.