Member Info for RMM3383

Depends on which part of the government system you look at:
https://www.hra.nhs.uk/covid-19-research/fast-track-review-guidance-covid-19-studies/
An application for a treatment could be reviewed in as little as 36 hours. Depends if/when it was submitted.

Hi Fadec - There seems to be a very consistent message within the research community regarding the cytokine storm. Would be nice to see something substantial emerge in terms of focused trials. Meanwhile the 'forced' drop in the SP has been revealed with two late trades. Clearly the order book still has something in it.

The price manipulation by the MM's is blatant and I've long stopped worrying about the shifts up and down when news is lacking. It's clear that the tweets have stopped working and the wait is on for something more substantial. The grant, if it is awarded, will only be a shot across the bows of anyone dithering over a licence. IMHO I wouldn't be surprised if we hear nothing more of it but a deal is struck elsewhere. I've rummaged thought the government research websites but there's no indication as to how long they might take to make a decision, assuming SAR have actually submitted an application. What is encouraging (at least for us) is the focus turning more and more towards therapeutics as the so called experts start to acknowledge that a vaccine is a way off at best and unlikely at worst. What would not help is for the BoD to reveal that a grant was applied for and rejected. However, I'd be very, very surprised if that turned out to be the case. Meanwhile I'm more worried about my dwindling red wine stock. Will it last until we get 'significant news'??? GLA LTH's

No doubt in my mind - price has been manipulated to accommodate buyer(s). Just a spectator now pending a news drop. GLA

Hi Thoth - looking at the buying pattern today do you get the impression that 1) an existing PI is buying (a lot) more, or 2) there is an institution buying or 3) someone new is building a stake? I'm wondering about option 2 but probably just wistful thinking....

One other thing to bear in mind from the articles on Anakrina was the reference to available supplies. Essentially not enough to go around. This prompted a question in my mind as to how much 1801 is available and how quickly could production be ramped up if trials were undertaken and it proved effective? Going for a research grant is one thing but we really need a big pharma to get involved to both get it through trials and manufactured.

Hi Krone - Good find. For those interested there's a shorter paper at:
https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/anakinra/
My understanding is that Anakinra acts directly on Il-1 whereas 1801 acts on IFNa/y which then acts on IL-1. It would seem from Tim's slides that both achieve the same end but there are a number of issues with Anakrina - firstly its an injection and around 10% of recipients have injection site reactions and 1-10% develop infections, reduced white blood cells or decreased platelets. No guarantee that 1801 is better but we don't have the tox issues whereas there do seem to be some issues with high dosing of Anakrina (low dosing produced no benefit). What is intriguing in the PulmCrit article is the comment ' COVID-19 is a highly inflammatory disease process, so it’s possible that a variety of different anti-inflammatory agents will exhibit some efficacy against it. So, we may now see a spate of positive trials involving various agents. 'Essentially no one drug is going to be a silver bullet.

Quite surprised the Sierra SP hasn't taken a hit considering the tepid 10-Q. Unless of course NG has told the analysts something else..... GLA

Potnak - I agree. 737 is just a sideshow with the focus on TYK2 or possibly Aurora. If it was a major element of SAR's pipeline then we'd be down a lot more. I'd still like the milestones but in reality nothing has changed.

From a quick read of the 10-Q from Sierra its all about Momelot and the delays from Covid 19 that are likely to result. The little content devoted to 737 we've seen before. If Sierra were about to on-licence there would be a NDA I place so I didn't expect any momentous news. The fact that they haven't accrued for the milestones is more likely an indication that they want the on-lincencee to pay for them. That keeps the accruals off the balance sheet and makes Sierra look better to their investors. Reading chunks of the report it is clear that NG has risked everything on Momelot and given the health warning around Covid 19's impact on trials I wouldn't be at all surprised to see their SP take a hit today. The rises we saw in the last few days were possibly driven by hope that NG was about to pull a rabbit out of the hat which he hasn't done. Big question is whether he's simply waiting on Gilead to take control. GLA

Good link Bighow - Fedratininb from what I can see is a Sanofi product. The link below is a tough read and a little off topic but.... on page 7 they tested 11 products..... of which, on page 8, is Sareum's TYK2. Paper was published in 2019 well before Covid but it presents some interesting problems of the JAK family and the issues around JAK2 inhibition. The plot thickens.... GLA
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6775116/

Hi Stoney - NG needs to get off the 'pot'!!! I'm hopeful there might be some sort of update on 737 as I can't see there being any news on Momelot that would drive the SP uplift. The article I read last night was that clinical trials in the US were grinding to a halt as patients are advised not to keep appointments in order to avoid infection. As the 737 trial should have been concluded last month I'm hoping that they've got all the data they need. As usual its a case of 'hurry up and wait'.

Anticipation is building for Sierra's Q10. Last year it was released on the 8th May. If they do the same this year it's going to be a long bank hol! The fact that their SP is up suggests that they've leaked something (not unusual) or the analysts are expecting them to pull something out of the bag. Like Thoth, I think they are going to attempt to jump on the Covid bandwagon. Whether it involves 737 or not is the big question. GLA

Aber - £4 is not what we'd get today. However, I would be very happy to join a 10p interim party and then any subsequent parties north of 10p!

Hi Potnak, my model uses current market sizes by condition, upfronts where relevant of similar drugs at pre-clinical, a standard industry forward P/E, a small market penetration % , single digit royalties and the number of shares in circulation including options and the dreaded risk factor. It's a bit more sophisticated than a fag packet but I'm not claiming its as good as what the advisors to the pharmas would have access to. What is interesting to me is the fact that even with different models and factors I still keep coming to the same sort of figure which gives me hope that it might actually be achievable! As to Thoths original 28p, no one could have forecast the impact of Covid and how it is changing the environment. According to Trump he think's he'll have a vaccine by Xmas but his advisors don't agree. In the meantime I suspect we'll see more focus on therapeutics as the vaccine timelines start to stretch out.

OK someone asked the question yesterday as to what a buy out price for SAR might be and I procrastinated because I wanted to look at the risk factors. Not surprisingly the following comes with huge caveats because the markets really are in uncharted territory. On the basis that everything other than 737 is pre-clinical I believe that the risk factor is very high for 1801/2 and Aurora (risk being whether or not it makes it to market in some form and the discount a buyer would expect when making an offer). At this stage in the game my model suggests that for the headline conditions targeted (and these are not all the potential targets) plus adding in a value for SKIL a price of 61p per share would be viable. As an investor I would not sell today for less than that. If the regulatory market changes as expected and fast track makes an impression then the risk factor comes down from very high to high and the price moves up to £1.32 per share. If we held on and got further down the clinical route the price jumps to £2.50 and then £4.41 if the risk is low. What I haven't factored in is the possibility of 1) an auction between pharmas 2)market sentiment (some of the spikes we've seen elsewhere show just what can happen and 3) a major re-focus by governments on the pharma sector as money rolls in to underpin nations health. So, what I now have are my benchmarks should an offer be put to the shareholders. In no way should anyone think this is advice, it's just me going through some basic calculations. As I said yesterday, the key thing is what a buyer is prepared to pay. GLA and a steady daily rise will do nicely until some substantial news arrives.

Hi Fax - I was in CPX not too long ago and decided to cut and run.... to put more into SAR. If SAR pays off in the near term then I'll be tempted to go back in purely out of interest. Valuations are a strange combination of objective and subjective. The real driver however, is what someone is prepared to pay. For anyone looking at SAR the valuation of the markets each molecule can target is straightforward, providing each molecule goes the distance and no one else develops a better variant. And that's the main issue - how do you quantify risk of failure? Traditionally this has been handled by milestones, clawbacks and other forms of staged payments where the lawyers make a fortune and the vendor/buyer can make or lose a fortune depending on how good their lawyer's weasel words are. At this stage in the game we are very high risk on 1801/2 and Aurora, less so on 737. This means that the discount will be high in order to cover the risk factor. However, the discount factor is currently in unknown territory because Covid has produced a completely different regulatory environment. Things will happen a lot quicker and interested parties will need to move faster and be prepared to join an auction. Over the next few days I'm going to try to get my head around how this might play out price wise but I'm of the view (and this is not advice) that the exit price could well be north of £1 even with all the above caveats. GLA and all IMHO.

Throughout the week I've been reading more and more about the threat of a second spike in Covid and as Thoth pointed out a few weeks back it was the 2nd and 3rd phases of the Spanish Flu that did the most damage. Despite all the media focus I don't see an effective vaccine being available in volume to prevent a second wave (sorry to be so negative when the sun is out). They might be mothballing the Nightingale Hospitals but that doesn't mean we are out of the woods yet and from what I read this morning the real reason they accepted so few patients was because of the multiple organ failure in those requiring intensive care that required more than ventilators. Remdesivir might speed up the recovery phase but the issue will be if large numbers get to the multiple organ failure stage where it is not effective. It's at this point that the immune system needs regulation and IMO any therapeutic regime will be a combination of drugs. From Tim's presentation it is clear they think they have a part to play and I'd be very surprised if they don't get a Government Grant. In the overall scheme of things I believe we have two short term news opportunities - one will be the announcement that they've secured a grant (next few weeks) and second that we'll get some feedback on 737 (the data must be in by now). With regard to Aurora I'm not convinced that the Chinese Pharma had Covid in its sights when negotiations started but that's not to say that the focus might have shifted. Either way, if they can resolve the solubility issue then news won't be far away and I'd put that as 3rd on the timescale. TYK2 - the patent and toxicity issues remain outstanding and unless they are resolved soon (of which I think the patent extension remains the biggest stumbling block) then this could drag on into Q3/4. One option that I'm sure they are exploring is that any 'deal' involving TYK2 and Covid could be back end loaded to cover the increased value from a patent extension. Without Covid acting as a catalyst I used to fear that a licence for TYK2 could drag on into 2021. However, the virus has done us a favour (in the worst possible way) and timelines will shorten, increasingly as Governments come under pressure to resolve the looming economic crisis. Hold tight LTH's and let the herd have their time. I've already developed herd immunity in this sense. GLA all genuine LTH's.

At the risk of repeating a few points already made combined with the fact that its still mid morning on Friday, I've been very happy with the steady growth in the SP over the last few weeks. Despite the volatility we are making good progress towards a platform from which we can add substantial value when tangible news arrives. This week we saw two significant events and plenty of hyperbole. The first of the two significant events were IMO, the clear statement that the Team are looking at getting money to fund a Covid 19 research project. Expecting to see a different presentation at Bio other than the slides put out on the SAR website was nothing but wishful thinking. The second significant event has been the fact that despite the best efforts of the MM's and day traders the SP has put on sustainable weight without significant news. The spikes clearly indicate that we have visibility and with some solid news we will see a re-rate. Apart from that little has changed so back to waiting. GLA LTH's

Can't find anything on Guangzhou Biomed (although there is a Q-Biomed but its based in the US and doesn't have the right profile). As Potnak says, Medicilon has the right profile but its a relatively small company although that might explain why the upfront was small. I'm probably more drawn towards a bigger player or subsidiary thereof. With regard to the comments about negotiating a deal in less than 6 months, it doesn't mean that the deal took 6 months. It could have been done in 3 but for the industry anything less than 6 months has historically been a challenge.