Theratechnologies Inc T.TH

RE:RE:Biotech funding

[Lee430]

Wino, Thanks again for the insight/sanity check...that was a nice momentary break, now back to being frustrated.

Wino115 wrote: Cycles...from feast to famine. Let's also think of the upside to this reality. The upside is that if any company shows fairly decent milestones along the way it should attract even more attention than normal from biotech investors. There are actually quite a few healthcare/biotech oriented funds (both mutual funds, hedge, institutional VC, etc..) so there is a very large captive asset base that has to invest in the industry and would flock to companies that deserve to be invested in and valued. Novel drugs with potentially large commercial applications and approaches will get their value one way or the other. We aren't there yet with THTX, but any company that can buck the trend with some succeses should have an audience. They will definitely stand out from the field.

By the way (and not to counter the article below at all), I did see the MacroGenics prostate drug did have some fairly prevalent safety issues, with something like 35% getting neutropenia and a lot getting something called hand/foot syndrome. Analysts think they have to do a lot of work around dosing and frequency to figure out how to lower the numbers. The comments I've seen suggest it would likely not be something clinicians would reach for unless they figure that out.  It appears to point to them needing to do a more extensive and longer Phase 2 to figure those problems out and that could be contributing to their issues. 

The importance to THTX would be that getting to a basket trial with a dose that has very low side effects and nothing serious is actually a very attractive starting point.  Of course, it has to be effective too, we know that!  But better to eliminate one huge hurdle that seems to stop many programs.  We know there will be side effects, some ugly, but we can hope none are to the point where doing 3-6 cycles is an issue, or where something lower, more frequently and with more cycles can help prolong life and reduce turmor burden and stop spreading the cells.  

qwerty22 wrote:

Feel­ing the pain of a bear mar­ket, Macro­Gen­ics plans to start a PhII/III by year's end — once they raise the cash

by Max Gelman

The biotech bear mar­ket has proven chal­leng­ing for com­pa­nies across the sec­tor, with sev­er­al lay­ing off staff or seek­ing merg­ers and sales. And on Tues­day, one pub­lic biotech high­light­ed just how stark its chal­lenges are in rais­ing funds and con­tin­u­ing clin­i­cal stud­ies.

Macro­Gen­ics re­port­ed its first quar­ter earn­ings Tues­day af­ter­noon and not­ed that it cur­rent­ly doesn’t have enough cash to fund a planned Phase II/III study for its lead ex­per­i­men­tal drug in prostate can­cer. Ex­ecs say they’re plan­ning on launch­ing the study by the end of the year and can ob­tain the nec­es­sary fund­ing for the Phase II por­tion by that time.

But as for de­tails on how it would do so, Macro­Gen­ics is re­main­ing tight-lipped.

A press re­lease put out af­ter Tues­day’s clos­ing bell al­lud­ed to “an­tic­i­pat­ed and po­ten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tion pay­ments” that could al­low the com­pa­ny to “rea­son­ably ob­tain fund­ing” for the Phase II co­hort. Oth­er op­tions in­clud­ed on­ly a vague men­tion of “a com­bi­na­tion of ex­ist­ing fi­nan­cial re­sources, a va­ri­ety of ex­ter­nal fund­ing or po­ten­tial rev­enue sources,” and the dread­ed “pipeline pri­or­i­ti­za­tion.”

Macro­Gen­ics ap­peared to inch to­ward the lat­ter path Tues­day, drop­ping triple neg­a­tive breast can­cer as a planned in­di­ca­tion for the drug.

On the com­pa­ny’s earn­ings call Tues­day af­ter­noon, ex­ecs did not tip their hands any fur­ther. When asked by SVB Se­cu­ri­ties’ Jonathan Chang for more de­tails, Macro­Gen­ics CEO Scott Koenig on­ly re­it­er­at­ed that the com­pa­ny ex­pects to find the mon­ey some­how and isn’t pro­vid­ing a time­line for when the study might be com­plete