RE:RE:RE:RE:Prothena and Management's Reporting Let me explain it a little differently, G1945V.
Prothena allowed its options for two more xB3 targets to expire. (We'll just ignore the fact that the original deal was for three option targets and that one of them just disappeared without explanation.) Bioasis no longer mentions Prothena in its MD&As or in its corporate presentations. In its annual financial report Bioasis recounts the historical event of signing the deal but does so with no update other than that the options have expired. If you look at the previous filings you will find a rather weird history of the option extensions and the final expiration. What did Bioasis get for those extensions? Did Prothena ask for them or pay for them? Or did Bioasis unilaterally grant them so that the company would not need to report their expiration and the disappearance of Prothena?
Prothena, four years after the deal, has no drug in its pipeline or mentioned in its filings that has any special capabilities with respect to the BBB. It appears that Prothena is doing nothing with xB3 and that Bioasis no longer has a business relationship with Prothena.
And yet Bioasis has not made the status of Prothena clear. It vanished. Similarly, the "large pharma" and GABA-a are gone. Mention of Aposense, Oxyrane, Janssen, Neuramedy and Chiesi are in the present tense but with no updates.
The section in the MD&A that discusses the Royalty Purchase Agreement with XOMA with respect to the Chiesi agreement references Chiesi's "...Lysosomal Storage Disorder Enzymes being developed..." Are they being developed? If they are, is Protalix involved? What other rare diseases are included in the Chiesi deal? xB3-004? Progranulin?
What about xB3-001? Who has xB3-001? There was an accidental revelation early in the summer that xB3-001 was in the hands of another company. xB3-001 may be the most valuable drug in the Bioasis development pipeline. If somebody else has it, or if it has been optioned off to another company, wouldn't that be material? Or has Bioasis employed some little legal trick to avoid reporting it for the time being? If so, WHY?
The share price is 15¢ and investors are banking on things that Bioasis is keeping secret. Bioasis is a public company and yet there is very little about Bioasis in the public domain. Bioasis may be using semantics to obscure its reality. Corporate secrets are the norm in pharmas and technology companies. With Bioasis, secrets are killing the investment.
And then there are the BIG QUESTIONs, never answered, not even after 14 years. Has any licensee or collaborator developed anything that shows that xB3 works and is safe? Has any licensee or collaborator developed anything that they have decided to move to the next stage of development? Has any licensee or collaborator dropped xB3 because of issues with xB3 but not with the payload? (Daiichi Sankyo, for instance?) Are there known limitations with xB3?
It's time for Bioasis to provide some reporting about these things. Or if there is nothing to report, then it's time to find a management that can get stuff done that it can report.
Meanwhile, if Bioasis is not fully reporting material events, circumstances and technology limitations, and is using language that purposefully obscures the status of Bioasis and xB3, would regulators be interested in that? Does the Prothena situation suggest deeper problems?
jd