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“This Tiny, Unknown Biotech is About to Unleash Its ‘Holy Grail’ Drug”

Biotech Supertrader teases that "This May be the Most Radical Advance in Medicine in the Last 100 Years"

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, January 8, 2014

Robert Morris is helming a biotech-focused stock newsletter that’s called Biotech Supertrader (modesty has no place in the world of newsletter promotions, of course), and I’ve never covered this letter before so I thought I ought to have a look at the latest teaser we’ve been asked about.

Morris, incidentally, has been featured in our pages before — but that was back when he was editor of China Stock Insider at the same publisher. That letter, like almost all China-focused investment newsletters, seems to have disappeared quietly into that good night … which probably tells you that it’s time to invest in China again, since the newsletter publishers are ignoring the Middle Kingdom and rushing out their pitches about biotech and tech stocks. At the time, Morris was teasing NQ Mobile (NQ), which has turned out to be pretty good if you bought it down there in the $6-8 neighborhood (though it’s been a wild ride).

So now what’s he pitching for his Biotech Supertrader?

Well, the destruction of “Man’s deadliest disease”, of course. Here’s how the teaser gets our attention:

“This Tiny, Unknown Biotech is About to Unleash Its ‘Holy Grail’ Drug on Man’s Deadliest Disease

“Their ‘Guided Missile Approach’ Could Save Thousands of Lives Each Year

“It’s about to become the most talked about advancement in cancer treatment in our lifetimes and you can lock in a life-transforming fortune if you act quickly….

“I’m urging my subscribers to load up on this stock NOW….

“I’ve just uncovered a tiny, unknown biotechnology company with a new cancer drug in phase 3 clinical trials which is showing remarkable success at treating several types of cancer.

“Their scientists have found an innovative approach to cancer care which involves a breakthrough in treatment. It goes deep inside the inner workings of our cells.

“Plus, this medicine looks to be many times more effective and with fewer side effects than the chemo, radiation, and drug therapies currently available.”

If there’s one thing that investors know can make them rich and make them feel good about themselves and the world, it’s a cure for cancer — we’ve seen that effective cancer treatments can and do (occasionally) turn little biotech stocks into gigantic successes, so the dream lives on that you’re going to catch one of these lottery tickets and own the next Genentech. Will we be so lucky? Well, let’s see which one he’s pitching:

“When this drug wins FDA approval – which I believe it will – this small company’s $4.16 stock price will go straight to the moon.

“And the market for this drug is absolutely huge!

“You see, this small biotech is targeting its new drug, let’s call it ‘drug S’, at cancers of the blood and bone marrow. And it is already in very promising phase 3 trials for these two types of cancer.

“But here’s where it gets really interesting. It looks like the drug this company is developing will also work on other types of cancer!

“There are positive signs it works on Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) too. There are 1.1 million people with this type of malignancy. Just in the United States alone there are over 300,000 patients with this disease according to The American Cancer Society. Each desperate for a cure.

“Plus it looks like ‘drug S’ may turn out to be an effective treatment for ovarian Cancer. There are more than 204,000 new cases of ovarian cancer diagnosed worldwide each year with 22,280 of these in the United States according to the National Cancer Institute estimates.”

So … who is it? Thinkolator sez this is Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals (CYCC)

Cyclacel is indeed a little biotech around $4 (it closed at $4.35 yesterday), with a market capitalization of only about $80 million — so be careful, we’re a big enough group here that if just a small percentage of Stock Gumshoe readers got enthused about this stock it could drive the shares up, less than a million dollars worth of shares trade each day (Biotech Supertrader says they limited their readership to 750 people — I don’t know if that’s still their cap or if they’ve hit it, but we’ll have more folks than that reading this free article).

And like many biotech stocks, it’s got some impressive scientists and it’s been losing money for a long time as they’ve been searching for a viable drug (their current lead drug also was a big focus of theirs back when it was in Phase 1 trials five or more years ago, so that’s a good reminder of the time these things take, it’s just starting Phase 3 trials now). It looks like they must have gone public in 2004, when they were about eight years old, and a quick scan of ten years of their financials over at Morningstar indicates that they’ve never generated more than a token amount of revenue (meaning, they’ve probably had some research collaboration payments or partnership funding, but never got a product to market), and have accumulated more than $250 million in losses to date. And had two reverse splits to keep the price from sinking far into penny territory.

So that’s not unusual, but it means that — as with all developmental-stage biotechs — it’s not about the financials or the fundamentals, it’s about what’s going to happen in their clinical trials and whether things are going well enough that they can continue to finance the trials … which get much more expensive as you progress through Phase 2 and Phase 3.

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All I know about them so far is that they say they’ve got enough cash to get through enrollment in their key Phase 3 study for “drug S” (which is sapacitabine) as of September when they last updated their investor presentation, but I know nothing about the science or the competing cancer drugs that are out there or how fabulous this particular one might be, so I asked our favorite medical writer, Doc Gumshoe (who, yes, is not a doctor) to check them out quickly and chime in. Here’s what he could share after looking into them for a few minutes (he’s just looking at the medical stuff, not so much the “investor presentations”):

    Cyclacel’s Prospects

    Cyclacel has three drugs in development at this time, and is involved in eight clinical trials with these drugs, not including two clinical trials that have been terminated. Their top contender is sapacitabine which targets the division of cancer cells. If you can prevent cancer cells from dividing and reproducing, you have the cancer whipped, so targeting cancer cell division (or mitosis, which is the technical term) is a highly promising avenue for treating cancer. However, we need to take note of the fact that sapacitabine is one of a large number of drugs that propose to fight cancer by this method.

    At present, all eight of Cyclacel’s clinical trials involve sapacitabine. Of these, at least one has been completed – a Phase 1 study of the safety and pharmacology of the drug. Four others are current, with no information about results. These are likely Phase 1 or small Phase 2 studies, to assess safety, determine what a correct dose might be, and evaluate whether the drug does what it’s supposed to do in human subjects with the target diseases, which in this case include acute myeloid leukemia (AML), cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, and some advanced solid tumors. Prior to the clinical trials, sapacitabine has demonstrated impressive results in delaying the spread of metastatic liver cancers in mice.

    From what I can gather from public sources (i.e., the NIH Clinical Trials Registry), there is one Phase 3 trial, which started recruiting patients in February of 2013 and is expected to be completed in late 2015. The trial is in elderly patients with AML, and compares alternating cycles of sapacitabine and decitabine with decitabine alone. Decitabine (Dacogen) is FDA-approved for treating AML and also targets cancer cells’ replication by attacking their DNA.

    It is possible that the Phase 3 trial by itself could lead to FDA approval for sapacitabine, depending on the strength of the results. However, that trial would not get the drug approved for use as monotherapy, since it is not being investigated as monotherapy. My guess is that Cyclacel is planning more trials of sapacitabine as monotherapy, perhaps in younger patients. And my further guess is that FDA approval is still quite a long way off.

    Sapacitabine is also in a Phase 3 trial with cyclophosphamide and rituximab for the treatment of relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Cyclophosphamide (marketed under several trade names) is a well-established chemotherapy agent used in a number of cancers, and has led to remission in many cases; however, it is associated with truly harrowing adverse effects. Rituximab (Rituxan, Genentech) is used not only in cancers but in some autoimmune diseases. And sapacitabine is also being studied in patients with previously-treated non-small-cell lung cancers.

    Although the piece from Biotech Supertrader said that the drug – identified as “drug S” –is also a promising treatment for ovarian cancer, I find no clue that it is being studied in such patients. [ed note: that’s because that “promise” is in the lab still, not in people — they had a press release about this in the Fall, “75% of Ovarian Cancer Patient Samples Highly Sensitive to Sapacitabine”, not studied in patients but on patient samples]

    Cyclacel has two other drugs in development: selicilib and a drug designated as CYC116. One selicilib study has been terminated, and in a second Phase 1 study, selicilib is used with sapacitabine in patients with advanced solid tumors. Remember, however, that Phase 1 studies are many rungs of the ladder below what’s needed to gain FDA approval.

    CYC116 is an aurora kinase inhibitor, meaning that it blocks the action of an intracellular enzyme that facilitates cancer cell mitosis. This is a promising avenue of cancer treatment, however, the traffic on this avenue is fairly heavy, and includes several other classes of drugs including tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and taxol based agents such as paclitaxel (Taxol, Bristol Myers Squibb); docetaxel (Taxotere, Sanofi-Aventis), Abraxane (a newer formulation of paclitaxel from Celgene) and others.

    CYC116 supposedly also inhibits vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which induces the growth of blood vessels that nourish cancer cells. Inhibiting VEGF is a well-established means of combating cancer, and CYC116 could hardly be characterized as a radically new departure in cancer treatment.

    The one trial involving this agent has been terminated. That, of course, does not mean that development of CYC116 stops dead in its tracks – there are many reasons why a trial can be terminated, and ours is not to speculate without more information.

    Beyond those three drugs, it’s hard to guess what Cyclacel may have up its corporate sleeve. It is certainly true that a successful cancer drug – even if only moderately successful– can be transformational for the biotech that develops the drug. But the drugs that Cyclacel has under development do not appear to this skeptical observer to be radically new departures in cancer treatment.

    It’s important to remember, when trying to estimate the likelihood of a single drug demonstrating sufficient efficacy and safety to gain FDA approval and market share, that the competitive field is vast. As I mentioned earlier, Cyclacel has a total of 8 clinical trials in process at this time.

    For the sake of perspective, it’s worth knowing that at present there are 41,445 cancer trials being conducted. So those are the odds.

So there you have it — it’s almost impossible to find a development-stage biotech whose financials look great or that makes your heart go pit-a-pat over their valuation, especially in a biotech bull market like we’ve seen over the past year or so, and Cyclacel doesn’t jump out as spectacular on that front either, not unless you’re a big believer in the promise of their specific drug. They’re a small stock and they don’t get much attention, other than from the analysts who probably helped them sell shares in secondary offerings in recent years, and there aren’t any major “skin in the game” insiders as far as I can tell (the CEO owns $1 million worth of shares, but he gets paid more than that every year), and there’s only one really focused owner on the institutional side that seems to have any kind of biotech focus (Eastern Capital owns about 7% of the shares, roughly $5 million worth … don’t know much about them).

So I don’t see a lot to make them stand out other than Robert Morris’ apparent enthusiasm for the shares (which certainly goes over the top, he calls his special report “The End of Cancer Worries Forever“), and I don’t know enough about the science to be a believer (though, to be fair, I almost never speculate on developmental biotechs because they’re so hit-driven and I’m not smart enough to be a hit-picker in the sector). It is at least encouraging that they are enrolling patients for Phase 3, and that they probably won’t have to raise more money before they have some indication of how the trial is going, but sometime in the next year or two they’re probably going to have to either get good results from this trial that let them raise cash at a good price, or have promising enough results that some big pharma company wants to jump in and help fund development of “drug S” (or just buy up the whole company, as happens with some regularity when a little biotech gets promising results).

Oh, and they are presenting at an investor conference next week, so maybe they’ll have something interesting to share then. As you can tell, this one doesn’t jump into my cup of tea … but these kinds of stocks almost never do. Sound interesting to you? Interested in the science or the lottery-ticket possibilities of $80-million developmental biotechs? Have any experience with Robert Morris or know whether or not we should consider him a biotech savant? Let us know with a comment below.

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dennis
Guest
dennis
January 21, 2014 11:52 pm

GREAT JOB! Thanks and Happy New Year.

rogie
January 21, 2014 11:54 pm

Forgive me if this has already been covered. I was confused about the outstanding shares (O/S) after reading the Benitec financials.
Per their November 13th “Company Update” this: http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20131114/pdf/42kv85zz8v1zqt.pdf
On page 18 you can see there are roughly 84M shares outstanding and another 20M of issued options for a total of about 104 Million O/S. With today’s close at $0.70 the current market cap is about $73 Million.
The values are in $AUD. So how does the ticker trading under BNIKF in the US market figure into this valuation? I’m confused.
Rogie

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Ted
Ted
January 22, 2014 10:05 am

I tried to buy some Benitec this afternoon in UK first on Australia market then on US.
In the end no one would buy them for me on US one.
This leaves the broker placing an overnight instruction on Australian market to buy at a max price and pay an Australian broker 100 Australian dollars on top of the other costs.
Selling might be even more difficult. Any thoughts please?

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Alan Harris
Guest
Alan Harris
January 22, 2014 3:01 pm

Its much the same In UK. I can ONLY place a limit order until Oz opens. But it can be done online without a human broker. I cant trade US Pinks etc unless I use a broker at £50 cost. During OZ hours my trade happens immediately. Like you I prefer to buy in country of origin because if things start to slide i can get out. By Wall St’s open, it may be a confirmed disaster.

Tahoe Les
Member
Tahoe Les
January 23, 2014 4:52 am

I agree with your comment on trying to trade in the country the stocks are issued. ETrade has a Global Trading option that trades on the exchange of that country. It’s a little bit of a hassle in that you have to convert US $ into the currency of the country you want to trade in and use the converted money to buy (around 3% commission to convert). One can currently trade on the Canadian, UK, Hong Kong, Japan and in Euros (don’t know which exchange). Unfortunately, they do not offer trading on the Australian Market yet.

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dunnydame
dunnydame
January 22, 2014 2:00 am

I’ll join the chorus of grateful readers of this thread – thank you Dr. KSS. It’s like an investing soap opera with an exotic cast of characters (the stocks) – (maybe my fellow SG subscribers too) – but far more brain-challenging. To save yet more messaging on the board, please DO NOT feel that you have to reply to my post!
How on earth are you getting any work done with the volume of thoughtful and intelligent replies you’re making to us all out here?
For my IRA account at Schwab, I too have not been able to have my BNIKF Benitec trade go through, even with the limit bid being above what the price was (before it rose higher), and yes, Schwab wants to charge that additional $50 fee too. Maybe tomorrow, but I don’t want to chase BNIKF upwards.
Penny

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ockrazor
ockrazor
January 22, 2014 9:57 am

Great info here but don’t like the fact that they did a reverse stock split. THAT IS NEVER GOOD. Dr. KSS I appreciate the info and evaluation of biotech companies. Rule 1 is do your own due diligence people. Use DR. KSS only as an opinion. I have followed biotechs for over 24 years and seen my fair share of risers and crapshoots. I remember the great gene run of jan 2000 and now most of these companies are shells for other companies. I am weary of Bentitec as they are competing against Gild and abbvie. I see they got approval for RNAi trial against HCV this am. You or someone else also mentioned that the stocks pool differently on the the two exchanges. I am doing my DD on this as this can be a concern.
You obviously know the space and I know plenty of DR that have turned extremely successful HF manager. We do need a gumshoe of this gumshoe. I can’t help but thing your partner in Australia is really named Tony in Australia county, NY. I apologize as its the defense mechanism in me as people easily forget 2008. I watch american greed alot to remind me to be extremely cautious with who gets my money. Travis I hope you have done some vetting as I think this could be youd ” Iomega as to Motely fool” moment and your site could get huge. I hope it does as you deserve it and Dr. KSS I mean no disrespect as you have continued my education in the biotech space and for that I thank you.

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Alan Harris
Guest
Alan Harris
January 22, 2014 2:53 pm
Reply to  ockrazor

S S: This, and your later posts interest me. Unless Im much mistaken, theres a lot of writing between the lines. You say youve traded Bio for 24 yrs so you must know your onions. You say your grateful to Swammi, but you seem to be giving a warning re BLT.Au….perhaps all Bio. As for ‘do your own DD’, when I see a post from a professional oncologist asking Swammi medical questions, I have to wonder what chance Joe Average has of any meaningful DD?.
Please (in the ncest sense) come clean and educate me (us maybe).
Thanks

ockrazor
ockrazor
January 23, 2014 10:28 am
Reply to  Alan Harris

Alan. Not much between the lines. I am conflicted that’s all. Trading and investing are two different animals. I want to like BLT.AU. and will probably pull the trigger but remember this a binary trial as Dr. KSS stated.

So are you buds with Malcom Mclaren. I saw him speak in the early 90’s

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Rosenmeyer
Rosenmeyer
January 22, 2014 10:47 am

my concern with chasing Benitec is very simple-Australian contact of Dr. Karma (who is superb imo) does the finances etc,-well with their casg position regardless of credit line-they will have to do massive financing to advance compound into clinical trials that will ensue-Phase 2 & 3-expect some dilutive secondaries etc. assuming things proceed as hoped for & they remain independent

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Rosenmeyer
Rosenmeyer
January 22, 2014 10:47 am

sorry meant to say cash position

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ockrazor
ockrazor
January 22, 2014 10:53 am

Greg Beirne and his wife, Jo-Anne, are downsizing from their Mosman home, having listed the five-bedder for about $11 million. Greg, brother to former bookmaker Dominic Beirne, bought the Moruben Road property for $9.5 million in 2008 when their daughters were at Queenwood School.-

they own 3% of the company

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karmaswimswami
January 22, 2014 11:05 am

To KindergardenInvestor: The acquisition of Aptalis by Forest caught me flat-footed. I would never have predicted that. Unclear to me that marriage will work because while both are good companies, they have radically different cultures. Aptalis began as Interfalk, literally run our of the basement of its founder, the Montreal businessman Leon Gosselin. He wanted to make a GI-niche pharma company. Under him, that company had a fabulous reputation like no other vis a vis the FDA. The FDA viewed it as so honest and transparent that when it perceived there to be a gap in GI therapeutics, the FDA would GO to Interfalk, later Axcan, and ask it to develop a drug for a problem with assurances of swift approval. It was a cozy, close-knit cautious, high-minded company. I actually helped train many of their reps about GI diseases, and I have never seen a more distinguished group of sales people. Getting a job with Axcan was hard: you had to have done something really interesting with your life for them to hire you. Gosselin took it private for one reason: he despised Sarbanes-Oxley. Forest acquired it because of the many disease areas it has products for, GI is a huge dearth for them. And they face many patent lapses. But this acquisition will ruin all that shines about Aptalis. It saddens me.

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karmaswimswami
January 22, 2014 11:29 am

To Sean Connery: Sorry I rambled on about Biomarin when you meant Marina Bio. Their shtick is yet another way to deliver RNAi, via bacteria. They are going after familial adenomatous polyposis, a rare heritable condition that literally makes your colon into a lawn of polyps:

http://familyhistorybowelcancer.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/image003.jpg

That picture above should be a field of smooth pink, and each nodule or bump is a pre-cancerous polyp. Obviously removing all of those is impossible (the most polyps I’ve ever removed in one colonscopy was 44, and I felt like I needed a nap afterwards. Exhausting.) I once had a patient that was a stat consult from an ER. It was a guy from Colorado who, the day before, had undergone a colonoscopy in CO, and FAP was diagnosed. The doctor who had scoped him was hellbent on doing something during the procedure to drive up the cost of the procedure, and so, despite the fact that there were millions of polyps, he decided he would remove just one for $. He chose a huge one (you get paid more for polyps >1 cm). He lassoed it with a snare, cauterized, but decided it was too big to remove. Basically he left the guy with a circumferential burn around a 4 cm polyp in his splenic flexure. He was on a flight because of a family death. Somewhere over Kansas, he began pouring out blood, bleeding through his pants and into the plane seat. The jet was emergency landed in my area. He was still fairly prepped, and so I scoped him stat. It was horrible…..big hypervascular polyp pumping blood. It took 90 minutes of endoscopic hemostasis to get it to stop. Basically, all these people need colectomy, with ileo-anal anastomosis, and annual flex sig of the rectal vault.

Marina’s idea is to take E. coli, transfect it with a gene from Yersinia called invasin, which confers on it the ability to invade intracellularly. Most bacteria act as pathogens extracellularly, but certain ones (tick borne bugs in particular) go intracellular. My qualm pertains to this. Intracellular invasion by bacteria is pathogenic. Where the E coli strain is toxigenic or not, once it enters the cell, it becomes a pathogen. The cell will fight it. Moreover, since those E coli will be invasin-positive, there is literally nothing to keep them from invading further, including into the bloodstream, where the circulatory exposure to lipopolysaccharide could lead to shock. Bacteria do not reproduce sexually, but they promiscuously pass DNA back and forth. I am uncomfortable with the idea of daily dosing with invasin-positive E coli that could confer a newfound ability to go intracellularly to all the hundreds of thousands of species of bacteria in the fecal biome, some of which can be deadly.

I guess what I am saying is, for this one to make it through phase I is not a foregone conclusion. It seems very risky to patients. And then faces an even higher barrier in phase II. I personally would not want to be a study participant. And then there is the issue of: if this works for FAP (and I doubt it will), does it have broad applicability? I don’t really see it. Only for body compartments that have bacteria: the mouth, the female genital tract, and the gut. I have serious doubts about this company.

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sean connery
Member
sean connery
January 22, 2014 8:22 pm
Reply to  karmaswimswami

Well I really don’t know how I feel about all that you just broke down for me. One thing is for sure, that is a pretty strange way to deal with polyps. I wouldn’t want anybody putting any e.coli in me. Thank you for taking so much time in answering me twice. This is not something i have not invested in and after your detailed explanation about their science, I’m not so sure I want to.

Subramania Kaushik
Subramania Kaushik
February 4, 2014 5:15 pm
Reply to  karmaswimswami

Marina Bio has gone up from 20 cents in November to close above $1 today. Seems like all RNAi companies have gone up like crazy. Hopefully Benitec will catch investors attention in the months to come!

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ockrazor
ockrazor
January 22, 2014 11:53 am
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ockrazor
ockrazor
January 22, 2014 11:54 am

who is Dr. christopher bremner?

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Leo S
Guest
Leo S
January 22, 2014 12:21 pm

Dr.Karma; At the risk of impinging on your prolific and erudite discussions: You mentioned in the response to Sean Connery in item 169 (tick borne bugs in particular). Since you have apparently studied them, I am interested in how you come down on Lyme Literate Doctors (LLD’s). Do they have a case regarding “chronic lyme disease”? I am personally involved with gaining some answers to some long standing chronic medical problems of my own. Thank you so much if you have the time.

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Derek
Guest
Derek
January 22, 2014 1:01 pm

Dr. Christopher Bremner is the investor who stepped up and literally saved Benitec from BK back around I believe 2006 when they were imbroiled in a life or death patent struggle with a now defunct firm called Nucleonics. He stepped in when the shares were close to worthless and ended up with a huge position in the company. To his credit and belief in Benitec he has stayed the course over all these years through dilutions and financings. Benitec won the patent battle for it’s seminal technology and then had to fight another challenge thereafter in Britain. They won both times and now their tech is battle hardened from the positive decisions. It left no time and money for the company to develop products. Fortunately Tacere with former Benitec management formed a US company that developed TT-034 along with Pfizer. Pfizer abandoned the program in a cost cutting measure even though the results through non-human trials were teriffic. Tacere wasn’t going anywhere and not able to start a human trial so they got together with Benitec and were absorbed. Bremner has been in the background supporting the technology. Bremner and other large long term shareholders are passionate about the company and management believe they represent a large enough shareholder group to block hostile low ball takeovers. I know this from a personally meeting with Dr. French and asking him directly. Also I have heard of Bremner being referred to as a savant in a positive context. Very successful, very wealthy, and very private. Kind of like KSS without the private. 😉

Management is very desirous of a US listing. They know the action/money is over here. It may be a pain to obtain shares but you might look on this as a opportunity and add any way you can to your portfolios at a price that might be much higher if there was an easy to obtain and very liquid US listing.

ockrazor
ockrazor
January 22, 2014 3:37 pm
Reply to  Derek

Thanks for the color Derek.

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ockrazor
ockrazor
January 22, 2014 3:42 pm
Reply to  ockrazor

So Derek are you saying its better to buy on US market?

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sophie1
sophie1
January 22, 2014 1:12 pm

Dr. KSS: Would be interested in your evaluation of the medical – and financial – worthiness of (ISCO) International Stem Cell. I have long held the stock before their reverse stock split. I copied the January 2014 CEO’s letter to shareholders to avoid misrepresentation of company objectives and medical research approach:
“About International Stem Cell Corporation
ISCO’s lead indication is Parkinson’s disease. The Parkinson’s disease program uses human parthenogenetic neural stem cells (hPNSC) a novel therapeutic cellular product derived from the company’s proprietary histocompatible human pluripotent stem cells. hPNSC are self-renewing mulitpotent cells that are precursors for the major cells of the central nervous system. The ability of hPNSC to (i) differentiate into dopaminergic (DA) neurons and (ii) express neurotrophic factors such as glial derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) to protect the nigrostriatal system, offers a new opportunity for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, especially in cases where current small molecule approaches fail to adequately control the symptoms.
International Stem Cell Corporation is focused on the therapeutic applications of human parthenogenetic stem cells (hpSCs) and the development and commercialization of cell-based research and cosmetic products. ISCO’s core technology, parthenogenesis, results in the creation of pluripotent human stem cells from unfertilized oocytes (eggs) hence avoiding ethical issues associated with the use or destruction of viable human embryos. ISCO scientists have created the first parthenogenetic, homozygous stem cell line that can be a source of therapeutic cells for hundreds of millions of individuals of differing genders, ages and racial background with minimal immune rejection after transplantation. hpSCs offer the potential to create the first true stem cell bank, UniStemCellTM. ISCO also produces and markets specialized cells and growth media for therapeutic research worldwide through its subsidiary Lifeline Cell Technology (www.lifelinecelltech.com), and stem cell-based skin care products through its subsidiary Lifeline Skin Care (www.lifelineskincare.com). More information is available at http://www.internationalstemcell.com.”
“To receive ongoing corporate communications via email, visit: http://www.b2i.us/irpass.asp?BzID=1468&to=ea&s=0
Sophie R

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Danwebs
Member
Danwebs
January 22, 2014 1:19 pm

With all of the talk about cancer, I am surprised there has been no discussion of Geron (perhaps there has been some and due to the length of this thread it may have been missed. Any thoughts?

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donsc
donsc
January 22, 2014 1:27 pm

Dr. Karma, My apologies to everyone reading this purely for financial information, but there has been significant discussion of medical issues that I find fascinating. I am a medical oncologist and would love you to expand somewhat on your thoughts regarding HPV vaccine as well as prostate cancer. As a non-academic clinical oncologist, I have seen a dramatic increase in HPV positive head and neck cancer and had been very hopeful that HPV vaccine could have potential to decrease this horrible cancer. Your comment regarding cervical cancer and the vaccine lasting only 5 years was very disheartening. Do you have any references that you could share. Proof of a cancer protective effect would require a huge randomized prospective study that would take potentially decades to accomplish and likely never be carried out. There has been another thread that has become a raging debate about vaccines in general. I would be interested in your thoughts. Testosterone may not be etiologic in prostate cancer but we certainly avoid it in diagnosed patients because it can promote growth. In the old days, we treated patients with estrogen with significant positive effects but this fell out of favor due cardiovascular events. Your comments about aromatase inhibitors left me somewhat confused. Are you saying that estrogen is etiologic in prostate cancer? Thank you for making this thread so interesting and for everyone participating in this thread. It has been fascinating reading. I read the entire thread on monday without falling asleep at some point (very rare) 🙂

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karmaswimswami
January 22, 2014 1:35 pm

Leo S: the whole tickborne illnesses field is very serious stuff. Not only Lyme and RMSF, but also Ehrlichiosis and STARI, for which the culpable bacteria (if it is a bacteria) isn’t yet known. These things go intracellular, where they evade antibiotics and yet cause serious multi-system pathology.

As regards Lyme, this is a famous passage by a well-known Harvard doctor:
Masters points out that the “track record” of the “conventional wisdom” regarding Lyme disease is not very good: “First off, they said it was a new disease, which it wasn’t. Then it was thought to be viral, but it isn’t. Then it was thought that sero-negativity didn’t exist, which it does. They thought it was easily treated by short courses of antibiotics, which sometimes it isn’t. Then it was only the Ixodes dammini tick, which we now know is not even a separate valid tick species. If you look throughout the history, almost every time a major dogmatic statement has been made about what we ‘know’ about this disease, it was subsequently proven wrong or underwent major modifications.”

It is a serious illness that needs to be treated early on. We once spoke of syphilis as being the great imitator because it can manifest itself in so many protean ways. Now Lyme is the great imitator: it can behave like RA, IBD, MS, CFS, fibromyalgia and even HIV. The field is so controversial….lawsuits and threats against researchers, back and forth medical society dictums about it, extreme passions…..that Lyme would be a fabulous Ken Burns documentary. Like the Balkans, the Lyme disease generates more history and drama than can be consumed locally. In diagnosing it, false positive rates are low, false negative rates substantial Chronic antibiotic therapy is controversial. Physicians get up in arms about it because many, too many, are quick to dismiss patients as “crocks” when in fact Lyme can clearly cause chronic illness that is definitely not in one’s mind. All doctors have at least some nutty patients, but I just do not ever write patients off. At the end of the day, the clinical unknowns (both known unknowns and unknown unknowns) still colossally trump the knowns. Sometimes I think that being smart isn’t about what you know, it’s about what you know you don’t know, which should keep you ever suffused with curiosity and a sense of awe.

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rogie
January 22, 2014 1:57 pm
Reply to  karmaswimswami

I know people with “chronic” or “late stage” Lyme and it’s a terrible disease, often striking people down in the prime of their lives, never to get back to full health. Anyway, thank you for that thoughtful reply Mr. KSS, you hit the nail on the head and I appreciate your open mindedness and (seeming) compassion for those suffering. I wish there were more treating physicians who have your perspective and knowledge so these patients wouldn’t have to spend thousands to see the few that are willing to treat them.

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Leo S
Guest
Leo S
January 22, 2014 7:10 pm
Reply to  karmaswimswami

Dr. Karma: Thank you so much for your response, I really appreciate it and it helps me to separate what is known and not known. Your compassion is humbling but you are too busy to address all this threads medical problems. I might just add that I have been at this for several years. About three years ago I suddenly came down with too many maladies with unknown causes and I wondered if my history of being outdoors consistently in Minnesota Washington state and Colorado and having many tick bites (some engorged) and rashes which were dismissed by the doctors as allergies, and not treated, could have been lyme. Recent tests indicate that I had lyme at one time but not sure whether I still had it. I needed your input to reinforce my faith in the LLD”s although I think there are one or two in the wings that would take advantage of desperate people. Thank you again for your comments and putting it in the proper prospective for me. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.

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biocqr
biocqr
January 22, 2014 2:58 pm

Dr, Karma… getting back to Genfit and ICPT…how would you interpret this research paper as it relates to Genfit’s MOA as a PPAR agonist vs. ICPT’s as a FXR agonist?

Bile acids induce the expression of the human peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha gene via activation of the farnesoid X receptor.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12554753

Is this saying ICPT’s drug works because of PPAR-a activation through FXR?

If that’s the case is Genfit’s direct PPAR-a activation a superior MOA?

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biocqr
biocqr
January 22, 2014 3:01 pm

Dr. Karma, Re: ICPT/Genfit…I forgot to post this as well…

Cross-talk between farnesoid-X-receptor (FXR) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma contributes to the antifibrotic activity of FXR ligands in rodent models of liver cirrhosis.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15980055

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ockrazor
ockrazor
January 22, 2014 3:46 pm

DR. KSS. Do you follow FMI. Y or N. Just curious.

Disclosure. Long FMI and have the hook stuck in my mouth on this Benitic. I just need to close it and lock into some shares. I was long Genelogic in the day and took that ride from 1 to 60. It continued to 250.

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