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avidimab deal could be the fast track to regular royalties. I'm guessing that if we were to outlicence for use in an already licenced product, then it would only be a quick phase 3 trial before commercialisation and royalties (massive assumption on my part there)
@hyms - I was meaning "half an eye towards solving the formulation problems of Moditope as an out-licence" rather than "half an eye towards acquiring Moditope"
Realise that wasn't clear in my original post. No way do I think Vaccitech could acquire Moditope
some news.. although mostly already known.
Trial reg in South africa has been updated. Recruitment status now set to "Closed to recruitment,follow-up continuing" with last follow scheduled by 31st Dec.
What was interesting is that trial has also had outcome measures changed - "Updated according to protocol amendment V3". The main difference I can see being, they were previously looking for number of patients with a 4 fold increase in antibodies, whereas now they are just measuring increase. I expect this relates to giving the vaccine in patients who have had covid, and will therefore have higher existing levels already.
https://sanctr.samrc.ac.za/TrialDisplay.aspx?TrialID=5625
I imagine it will come down to the strength of your negotiating position. The stage payments are obviously a way for the pharma to de-risk their investment, and are beneficial to the research company as they encourage pharma to invest. But the pharma will want to push as much of the payments out to as late as possible, and the bio will want to bring them forward as much as possible. How much each side is prepared to shift will depend on the perceived risk of the investment (is it in an area of unmet need? what are the pre-clinical results showing? what is the projected market? is there competition for the product from other pharma?).
My gut feel on this deal is that it has novelty on its side, but early stage against it. I suspect it will therefore be a standard type payment structure. all imho
@RR its a non-sensical argument. If i bought a china plate at a jumble sale for 50p, and it was then found to be Ming Dynasty plate worth a £1,000,000, I'm not going to sell it for £100 just because it is more than what I paid for it. Redmile are experienced biotech investors. They will know exactly how much they can squeeze big pharma for, and will go for every £.
Just my 2c worth. Although it is "impossible for us to calculate" because we don't have full visibility of all the factors that would go into the calculation of a value, the money men/women in pharma know how to calculate these values - certainly to within a ball park. All of the factors mentioned by Burble above will be accounted for, and as described, are all in Scancell's favour. They will then adjust according to factors such as competition - novel successful platforms could drive a bidding war. All in all, if Immunobody and Moditope prove successful in the current trials, then estimates of £2 would be on the very very conservative side - imho. I strongly believe that in the event of a total buy out none of us have yet estimated correctly.
If they can do a few more MaB deals and financially secure up the future of the company to take moditope into later stage trials, then our bargaining hand is strengthened even further.
I think the shouting will come with time. The old saying "One Swallow does not make a summer" could apply here. The news of the first patient showing a partial response is amazing, and suggestive that Moditope does exactly as we hope, but the company have said previously they will not prejudice the trial or give false hope to patients by making unsubstantiated claims of success.
Given that it is only a matter of months since this patient begun treatment, and they have been able to see these clinical improvements, it bodes well for how soon we may get meaningful updates. The monotherapy trial arms are monotherapy because they are not currently approved for treatment with Checkpoint Inhibitors. I would expect that to mean that recruitment in these indications should be less of a challenge. Couple that with clinician enthusiasm from the partial responder, and we may fill up these monotherapy trial arms fairly quickly. It could be as soon as Q1 next year that we get early clinical data in these cohorts. That's when I hope the media pick up on success. IMHO
perfect - thanks Bermuda. So the patient that has already had 30-50* ish reduction in tumour can still probably expect to receive another 3 doses over the coming months. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of hope this trial has given that patient.