RE:RE:RE:Partnership coming or not? No one believes cancer news…In the Credit Suisse presentation he did comment about how well aware he is of how slow a large pharma company is in such matters because of all the levels of approval a deal needs to get in the large company bureacracy. The noises I have heard from the beginning on partnerring Egrifta in NASH have never made me think there is 2 or three competitors chomping at the bit. They are going to need to finance the first 400 patients themselves, then hope the results are good enough (or that they are rolling in cancer cash inflows by then) so that they then can attract a partner. I suspect Egrifta unfortunately just is the ugly duckling of all the NASH opportunities out there due largely to the very unconventional way it got to where it now is.
They have been trying to obtain a good partnership offer for abbout 5-6 months, maybe more if we know what may have been going on behind the scenes before they announced they were in the market for a partner. While it takes some time to get such a partnership all lined up, I am not hearing the superlatives used to describe cancer when they talk about Egrifta. The IND is now almost a year old and the phase III has not been started. If the Egrfita NASH opportunity was viewed generally as really great, either a deal would already be done or the language surrounding Egrifta for NASH from the company would not sound as close to begging as it currently does.
palinc2000 wrote: Wino
From the beginning you have mentionrd a time line of a year or so to conclude a partnership deal for Nash....This assumption sort of means that you think that Paul is wet behind the ears when it comes to deal making .....Paul has never even hinted at such a long timeline.
Maybe your theory is based on the premise that Thtx would start Phase 3 all on their own while still carrying a search for a partner.....
If not the latter your position is not very flattering for Paul....
quote=Wino115]I thought about the selling pressure too, but came to the conclusion that given the highly conservative nature of management, the fact most are remote still, and the fact we analyze every darn clue there is released or not, that I just don't think there is any group of investors that knows a whole lot more than we do about the cancer opportunity. So I discount that someone has ferreted out an aspect of the program to justify the selling.
Now that doesn't at all preclude someone from just determining they don't want to deal with the timeline, or the risk, or they are looking more generally at the cancer space and seeing numerous new technologies looking to tackle the issue; hence, a highly competitive space. Those can easily be reasons to move out, but I don't think it's that there has been a negative signal on the progress of the Phase 1a trial.
On NASH, they're now about 3 months in to a likely 6 to 12 month process. I think we'll have to wait still for any partnership discussions for NASH and, if and when they come about, don't expect a lot of upfront money changing hands.
Dcutter101 wrote: So let's Get NASH going!!!
[/quote]