BioBoyScout over ARO-COV.:
Sharing a thought on Arrowhead's COVID drugs that are under development, and I would love to get your thoughts on what you think. My guess is that Arrowhead may be finalizing somewhere between 1-3 drugs to tackle all variants of the virus. As you may know, being able to effectively target other variants is now a very big concern, as these new variants are starting to cause problems (both in the ability to spread and how deadly they are). Health departments everywhere are now testing approximately 10% of all nasal swabs for the variants, and if they're found, they tend to hone in on that patient extra hard to try and stop the spread (good luck with that effort, given how fast this virus spreads).
With that said, I can't imagine that Arrowhead would advance any of their COVID drugs all the way though the clinic without partnering, as the trials will need to be large and will require the attention that only a BP can give. Arrowhead can probably do a phase 1/2 on their own, however, this is probably worthless given the gravity and the need for these drugs. Additionally, phase 1 will probably need to be fairly complex in order to effectively target all the various different populations and to advance it broadly in the trials. I think it would probably be wisest to partner on day 1, as BP would know best on exactly the right populations to target - something that I believe is beyond Arrowhead's expertise.
Therefore, I surmise that if and when Arrowhead introduces its COVID drugs, it will probably be with a BP partner. I don't think this is any easy task to convince a BP to invest around a half-billion or more of its money on testing an RNAi approach, especially since there are now many vaccines hitting the market with efforts to add boosters to cover other variants. In any event, time is ticking, which is why a suspect that we may hear something within the next month or two on their COVID drugs.
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"They’re not gonna catch us. We’re on a mission from God." The Blues Brothers, 1980.