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Tuesday, April 1, 2008

RNAi Therapeutics Investment Tracker Update

Following today’s announcement by Protiva and Tekmira, I was finally able to face the reality of the plunging stock market, and updated the investment tracker. Due to the spin-out of RXi out of CytRx, I have liquidated as of today the CytRx part of the deal and reinvested the proceeds into RXi so that there are now 40.85 shares in the portfolio purchased at an adjusted share price of $12.24. Other positions were left unchanged, although progress was noted for Nastech and Rosetta Genomics.

Nastech has successfully appointed a scientific advisory board for mdRNA, collecting Nobel laureates as if they were stamps and suited for their RNAi delivery efforts. It is now critical to build on this with a successful fund-raising round and hopefully a financial separation between the nasal delivery and RNAi Therapeutics businesses. I do understand that there are overlaps, but experience has shown that exposing RNAi Therapeutics to the risk of an unrelated technology has hurt RNAi Therapeutics development efforts rather than helped it. Also, the meroduplex poster at the Keystone meeting did not make much sense to me as the whole idea is based on the premise of circumventing Alnylam’s IP no matter whether it makes sense scientifically or not. I’d rather see a company focus on delivery and license the target rights accordingly, than a company trying to re-invent the wheel and consequently making drug development for themselves even more difficult than it already is.

Rosetta Genomics has impressed me at the Keystone conference by their presence and breadth of science. The RNAi/microRNA world is watching them as they prepare the launch of their first microRNA diagnostics this year.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nstk is hiring left and right adding to their burn rate besides appointing new board members. With higher expenses and lower earnings compounded by the letter recently from their own accountants regarding continuance as a company,
I can't see how they can beat the clock.
No accomplishments in 24 years to date and stock price is $1.19

By Dirk Haussecker. All rights reserved.

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