Besides all of the scientific studies by Texas Tech, MedImmune (AstraZeneca), OncoDesign, Scarpa, NRC, UBC and others, there are other aspects to the question about whether xB3 works.
There are questions than one can ask the CEO about xB3. Over the last ten years or more, I have asked the three CEOs the following questions:
1. Has xB3 ever failed in its purpose of delivering a therapeutic payload across the BBB?
Answer: The CEOs (all three) have always answered "no".
2. Has a delivered therapeutic payload ever failed to work after it's been delivered to the CNS where the failure was attributed in any way to xB3?
Answer: All three CEO's have always answered "no".
3. Has xB3 ever failed in any way?
Answer: All three CEO's have always answered "no".
4. Have any partners, prospective partners or any pharmaceutical industry players held the perception that xB3 is a failure or has problems such that the perception could impede dealmaking?
Answer: All three CEO's have always answered "no".
So, according to the CEOs, there are no issues with xB3. And yet Bioasis couldn't get much done with respect to deals. I don't think that RH could ever have gotten much done with respect to deals. He wasn't doing any serious work with xB3, and he's not a scientist. He got financings done and some scientific stuff done that came way short of enough for an IND submission.
It looked like Mark Day was moving in the right direction. He did the Prothena and XOMA deals, and the Chiesi deal was set up by him. But Rathjen shot him out of the sky.
Rathjen closed the Chiesi deal, but in the end it wasn't very good. Four LSDs for $750,000 each. Peanuts. And then the hunt was on with Ladenburg Thalmann for strategic alliances or whatever euphemisms she used during that process. She shelved xB3-001 and yet accidentally revealed evidence of a deal for it with Ellipses. She camouflaged xB3's value by downplaying it and doing the EGF deal. I've detailed elsewhere all the negative things she did with xB3 and why she might have done these things.
But throughout it all she never expressed any doubt about xB3, its capabilities, or its value. She couldn't. She wanted to sell it off, in my opinion. If she had said that there were problems with xB3 and she later sold out to others like Midatech and LT and The Placee, and if xB3 worked, could she be considered to have engaged in a shareholder fraud? I will have more to say about Rathjen's behaviour in this regard as the story unfolds.
But, fuzzy, getting back to why I don't care what anybody thinks about me, it’s not about me. It’s about the message. I'm only interested in describing, on the record, what Rathjen did and didn't do, how she created a very opaque story about Bioasis and xB3 for the last three or four years, what her weaknesses are, whether she's incompetent or malicious, and whether she's honest, or not.
Shareholders are very upset by what I'm posting. I don't blame them. Shareholders, many of them, still believe Bioasis can be saved and that xB3 is very valuable. In my opinion, they are right on both counts, but Rathjen doesn't care. I think the case can be made that she believes Bioasis shareholders won't act no matter what they believe, and so far she's correct in that assessment.
So, what to do? Just sit quietly by and watch her do whatever she wants? That's likely how it's going to turn out, but not without somebody, me, I guess, so far, describing what she might be doing. I think she's shameless, that she thinks she lives in a bubble. Well, the Bionomics people burst that bubble and they essentially fired her. With respect to Bioasis, I'm running after that bubble and I may not burst it but at least I'm trying.
My conscience is clear. I have posted the good, bad and indifferent. And if Rathjen is doing what I think she may be doing, at least she'll know it was exposed, even if she gets away with it.
I will not apologize to shareholders. That's very different than being greatly saddened by what has happened to the shareholders, which I certainly am. I'm angry as hell that Mark Day put her on the board, that RH supported her becoming CEO, and that she became CEO.
Like most shareholders, I didn't quite believe that she was that incompetent or malicious. I worried about this stuff happening, wrote about it, but even so, how could she could do to shareholders what she has done? How do you destroy a company that has a technology that even Denali believes is better than theirs. Denali! A company worth US$3.2 billion today!!
How do you destroy that? Rathjen and RH have shown us how.
So does xB3 work?
If it doesn't and Rathjen knows it, then Midatech, LT and The Placee, Dr. Mario Saltarelli, and Dr. Deborah Rathjen were acquiring xB3 to promote a pump and dump sometime down the road.
Much more likely is that xB3 does work, consistent with all of the scientific results as I described above. Further, I think that Midatech, LT and The Placee, Dr. Mario Saltarelli, and Dr. Deborah Rathjen were acquiring xB3 because they know it works and they know they can make another Denali, or something like Denali, from xB3.
I didn’t do any of that. I’m just speculating about it, and memorializing it here. Is there any hope that exposing it here, and if I’m right, that shareholders might sufficiently rise up to prevent this from happening? Or to cause enough fear and shame in Dr. Deborah Rathjen that she might just walk away and let the shareholders handle things?
Not holding my breath on that.
xB3 works, I believe, and it is worth a lot of money. Rathjen and the gang believe that, and they still want it.
And the shareholders can stop it, and report it. I’ll help report it. I have a lot of evidence, knowledge and plausible theories, but I won’t do it without help.
jd