Sorry link not working - here's the piece on SDI n the next tier of companies above the $50 million cut-off, my picks, now including Trimel, would be Tekmira and Spectral Diagnostics. Tekmira suffered a severe devaluation in its stock price almost immediately after it successfully executed a share consolidation and NASDAQ listing in 2010. A perfect storm of adverse events culminated in a long litigation with its former partner, the result of which was the share price being cut by 75%. However, the company still possesses its leading-edge technology in the RNA interference space, which is all but impossible to explain to Canadian investors. The hard-won cash it received from successfully defending its IP leaves its technology value at a ridiculously low level. As interest in RNA interference grows, Tekmira will be a direct beneficiary. For comparative purposes, the major players in this space sport valuations from the $100s of millions to the $4 billion now enjoyed by its former partner, Alnylam. October’s $35 million, entirely U.S.-led financing clearly underlines this fact. It is worth noting from an historical perspective that Tekmira is the successor company, by way of a few iterations, to Inex Pharmaceuticals, part of the original class of ’90s Canadian biotechs. Its original drug candidate, now branded as Marqibo, was finally approved in August 2012 for treatment of a subset of ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia). The drug passed through many hands of ownership over the years, too numerous to mention here, and appears to have $50 million in potential sales for its now owner, Spectrum Pharma, in this approved indication. As mentioned earlier, the old model did not serve investors well, but the drug may still finally reach Inex’s originally targeted market in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) back in the ’90s.
As for Spectral, one of the early stock market successes in Canada, its potential stems as much from years of capital market neglect as from the promise of its technology. Its stock price rose spectacularly in the early 1980s, almost reaching $1 billion in market value, on the strength of early excitement about its “point of care” cardiac diagnostic panel invention. Nothing of much value resulted from this early technology. A management change over ten years ago set the company on a new long and painfully dilutive path (again, based on the old model) to what may finally become a huge win for its long suffering shareholders. Ironically, its current technology marries a well-established Japanese filtering device to—you guessed it—a point-of-care diagnostic, albeit in the vastly more challenging area of septic shock. Sepsis remains one of health care’s most profound problems. If its current phase 3 Euprates trial on which management has “bet the company” succeeds in 2014, the share price win will be in multiples.