En nog even een post van het Yahoo-forum welke mogelijk interessant is, kredietwaardigheid van de schrijver kan ik niet beoordelen:
BioBoyScout13 minutes ago
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Here's my write-up on my meeting with Arrowhead in San Francisco during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel on Tuesday, January 14th. The meeting was with Bruce Given, the COO, and Vince Anzalone, VP Head of Investor Relations.
The person that was supposed to meet with Arrowhead just before me was a no show, so I started 10 minutes early and this gave me a full 40 minutes instead of just a half hour. The discussion initially began on my thoughts of Dicerna and Ionis possibly merging with each other because Dicerna is incredibly backlogged with all of its partnerships, and Ionis has potential problems in the future with its ASO (antisense oligonucleotide) modality being inferior to RNAi.
Vince pointed out that Dicerna basically made the decision to become a CRO (contract research organization), therefore IT IS OBLIGATED to develop drugs for its partners, and that leaves very little bandwidth for its own development for wholly-owned drugs. He said that Ionis is also in the same boat, and as a result, both companies are missing out on developing more of their own wholly-owned drugs.
Vince thinks that it's tough for anyone to acquire these companies due to the fact that much of the valuation of its drugs is partnered out, and that leaves much less additional revenue for a potential acquiring company. Vince pointed out that Arrowhead has a different business model by holding on to the global product rights for its drugs for as long as it can. This allows Arrowhead to build the MOST value for its shareholders, as well as having the added benefit of getting its drugs to patients much faster. In my opinion, I believe that one can come to the conclusion, and even reasonably assume from Vince's arguments that IF a big pharma company wanted to acquire an RNAi or gene silencing company, then Arrowhead would clearly be a much more attractive candidate than Dicerna and Ionis because of the full revenue potential that is available on its wholly-owned drug candidates. IMO, I still believe that a merger between Dicerna and Ionis still makes a lot of sense and would be in the best interests of both companies. Additionally, Dicerna may be somewhat of an attractive suitor to one of their partners, particularly Eli Lilly, as they already have some skin in the game.
With that said, Arrowhead believes that it executes in the drug developing process better than any of its competitors. By keeping its drugs wholly-owned, Arrowhead can then keep for itself most of the value of its drugs. In addition, the best way to get drugs to the patients that need it most in the quickest possible time is to keep the drug development process in-house and wholly-owned, as that is the clearly the fastest path to approval. Arrowhead further believes that its clinical operations and program management operations are very fast and very good, and that its able to do this without cutting any corners along the way. Contrasting this to Dicerna, its drugs are licensed out and this slows down the entire process; because of this Dicerna can't be as motivated for data readouts as Arrowhead is.
In Arrowhead's partnership with Amgen, Vince pointed out that the path for getting the data was significantly slower than if Arrowhead were to do it itself. For example, the IND-ready drug that Arrowhead gave to Amgen in the fall of 2016 would have been in the clinic in early-to-mid 2017 if Arrowhead was handling it. Amgen, however, didn't get the drug into the clinic until the summer of 2018, as Amgen wanted to be extra sure of what it had. Additionally, since the summer of 2018, Amgen has been slower with its data readouts than the way Arrowhead would handle it.
Vince and Bruce pointed out that with the second target that Amgen asked for (which Bruce personally never really liked), Arrowhead delivered to Amgen exactly what it wanted, that it was a good drug, and that the drug did what it was supposed to do. In the end, Bruce wasn't surprised that Amgen didn't take the second target.
At the present time Arrowhead believes that it has a good mix of partnered drugs and wholly-owned drugs. It would like to keep that particular mix the way it is, but it will partner some indications when the time is right. Presently, the main goal is to grow the wholly-owned pipeline, as it doesn't see any present need to partner. Vince said that the goal when partnering is to only partner when the partner can do something for you that you can't do yourself, such as provide capital, development, commercialization, marketing, etc., and Arrowhead doesn't need any of this at this present time.