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Re: NAVB. Extensive DD has been compiled into a single source for those with an interest in Navidea Biopharma. Do your own DD as always.
Link: http://advancedduediligence.blogspot.com/
Disclosure: Long
Don't get too worked up about which board...
... has the best features. We're working on something that should be good for everyone. Ya'll enjoy the 4th!
DDbuyer
ChairMail sent....
Probably should respond via e-mail, rather than on the board. iHub likes to keep the OT stuff to a minimum.
skewbie, deut, whitehat... you guys have multiple entries. I can't see your e-mail addys, so you may have put in more than one addy, which is fine. But if they were accidental duplications of the same email address, let me know and I'll delete one of them.
DDbuyer
bru... they won't let the Mods add anyone.
It has to be voluntary. Just click here:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/chairmail_sub.asp?board_id=853
Your e-mail addy stays private. Nobody sees it... all I see is your iHub alias.
DDbuyer
Back to business: 8K Filing...
RE: the incentive stock plan
"The maximum number of shares of the Company’s common stock, $.001 par value, which can be issued pursuant to the Plan is 7,000,000 shares. No participant may receive awards covering more than 500,000 shares under the Plan in any performance period. Additionally, in no event may an award be granted pursuant to the Plan on or after March 7, 2012."
The plan already had 5,000,000 so it's an increase of 2,000,000 shares over basically the next four years... or some 500,000 per year on average.
Bupp's been getting (taking?) 200,000 per year for the last couple years. The rest of the crew has been splitting another 150,000 or so between them.
Someone asked about the Director's stock compensation, but that's paid out of the treasury, not the performance plan.
DDbuyer
ChairMail. Is everyone on the ChairMail list...
... that wants to be on it? Outgoing mail soon.
DDbuyer
JD - point taken and duly noted...
We've had a lot of oblique attacks from the basher that comes in with his innocent "Hi, great to be here gentlemen, just a few questions..." ploy.
It's easy to spot, and I guess I just wasn't willing to let him play it out. I'll try to be more patient next time.
DDbuyer
I'm okay here, buddy. Ya'll go ahead...
... like I said, I'll catch up.
Give 'em hell for me over there!
DDbuyer
Well...no. I was actually thinking...
... that it would be better for everyone on IV if I just remained on iHub for a while, and stayed out of the mix in hopes that it would help things cool off with the bashers.
I thought that might help some stability return to the IV board.
But okay... whatever...
DDbuyer
I have an idea...
... so for right now you guys go on back without me. Maybe I'll catch up at a later date.
Pop in and say hi from time to time so I don't get too lonely...
(thumbs up!)
DDbuyer
Up 6% on 32,000 shares...
... with a BID and ASK you could drive a truck through.
No interest in buying. No interest in selling. The big wait. The smartest thing to do would be sign off for two months then check back in... but I guess that wouldn't be as much fun as waiting and watching.
Well... Q2 is in the books. We should get a C.C. in about a month... maybe Bupp will be generous and give us a taste of how the trials are progressing at that point (don't get your hopes up that he will though).
tonoos... you get your new Mac? You back with us?
DDbuyer
Thinly traded? NEOP isn't thinly traded...
I've been nosing around for another NEOP and stumbled on this:
Easy to get into... might be a challenge gettin' out...
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=BTEL.OB
DDbuyer
wolfgang - RE: ChairMail
Admin/Moderators can't enroll members for ChairMail. People are sensitive about being added to any e-mail lists these days... so members have to voluntarily add their name themselves. If you'd like to be on it, just click here:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/chairmail_sub.asp?board_id=853
FYI - For privacy sake, Moderators don't see your actual e-mail addy, we just see your iHub alias on the list.
I guess the list could have value for sending private, off-board info to all the members at once. I just haven't found a reason to use it...
DDbuyer
Moderator
I've really backed off Bupp since last year...
... because I think it's fair.
I rode his back like a rabid monkey for years, and I know he'd love to see me boiled in oil. But as a CEO he really botched it too many times, getting his on the job training while the price dropped to 5 cents. Piling on one or two hundred thousand options a year and taking home $300K didn't make me any more of a supporter.
Now I'm mostly just watching him, trying to be fair and objective and not criticize too harshly.
But like tonoos said... Bupp has one chance... Lympho. If he pulls it off, Bupp deserves congratulations and a bunch of those 2,000,000 shares "we the shareholders" just voted to give management over the next four years.
If he screws up Lympho... the bus theme is back, big time!
DDbuyer
Neoprobe on local Columbus TV?
Man... I'll bet ya Bupp was beside himself that day!
A lot of people in Columbus lost money when RIGS came to a halt ten or twelve years ago. Bupp is looking to redeem himself...
I wonder if any of the original investors are getting involved with NEOP again... or if it's "once burned, twice shy"?
If I was one of them, honestly... it would be tough to get involved again. Even if it looks promising, I think most people would have a tough time overcoming their original disappointment. Human nature I guess. That's why I've always believed that most of todays NEOP owners are "2nd generation" owners of the stock. I could be wrong. Just a hunch...
DDbuyer
"Approvable" letters are an oxymoron...
FDA Approved! But..................
Many a new drug is sitting on a shelf with an "Approvable" letter on file. It's probably more unlikely with Lympho because it's replacing an off-label drug used for an already common procedure.
But................
<ack!>
Hush yo' mouth now!
DDbuyer
wolfgang... thanks for digging into that!
I too was confused by the shares being listed as both Medical Strategy and as VCH Expert Biotech. If Medical Strategy held the shares, you'd think they could confirm if they owned them. But they responded as if the shares were all owned by VCH Biotech. So, who knows...
I didn't realize you'd been a follower so long. Back then LotB, BBB, franshei and I all thought we were just talking to ourselves! Didn't realize you were a fly on the wall... it has been a long, hard road for sure... but it looks like we all could be rewarded if Bupp doesn't trip over his big feet in the next few months.
On your last point... I could go into a lot of long-winded detail and give you my candid thoughts... but rather than that, I'm just going to ask you to give it a chance. I think you'll be okay with it. There are a lot of different opinions on this, and I think (hope?) that I can find middle ground that will keep everyone reasonably content, and still have a great board.
DDbuyer
Well.... whatcha think chart man?
Is it time to pull some cash out of the freezer and start warming it up?
DDbuyer
That's very true. It's not a Basher Bash Button...
... but an abusive poster bash button.
Follow the rules... and it's no problemo.
Break the TOU, and your post will be deleted.
It's really quite simple, yet people still have trouble grasping it.
DDbuyer
Moderator
Well... 4,000,000 a day is strong for us.
I think the increased liquidity-action-excitement would lure in those that otherwise might be leery of jumping into a thinly traded stock.
I know that I always look at liquidity when I jump in for a trade... if it's super liquid, I'm a lot more likely to pull the trigger.
DDbuyer
clambottler...
You posted "I do not know what the problem is with these other posters. Seriously what is the malfunction here?".
That is a direct violation of the TOU. You cannot attack other posters. I could delete your post for that offense, but I won't as a courtesy.
If you post questions to the board and others choose to ignore you, that is their prerogative. You'll have to accept that. Thank you.
DDbuyer
Moderator
Zero correlation... thus far I agree.
Indeed, that zero correlation has been a blessing lately on days when the market tanked and NEOP didn't blink.
I'm just wondering ahead though. If we get back to those high volume days of 4,000,000 shares a day, will all that change...?
Again... I have no answer. It'll be interesting to see.
DDbuyer
clambottler... all of the information requested...
... is readily available from the sources we've provided to you. As others have noted, there are additional sources available to you, including calling Neoprobe directly. We hope you are successful in finding the answers you're looking for.
DDbuyer
I've been thinking about NEOP and...
... the timing of the market bottom.
Some are predicting the DOW actually going below 10,000 and the S&P hitting 1150 or less in the next couple months.
If that happens, Lympho interims or a RIGS announcement could coincide pretty closely with a market bottom.
What affect would that have on NEOP? Would buyers be extra eager to jump into something green on good news, or will they sit on their cash and play it safe out of fear?
Food for thought...
DDbuyer
I stumbled on this quote somewhere:
“The efficient-market hypothesis may be the foremost piece of B.S. ever promulgated in any area of human knowledge!”
I agree with that.
For markets to efficiently reflect the true value of anything, everyone has to have the same knowledge, there has to be complete transparency and information dissemination, and you need sufficient liquidity to prevent undue transactional price bias.
Stocks that sit in the shadows, largely unknown and illiquid, can have significant changes to their underlying value, yet have little or no effect on the market price. Then... when some event occurs that thrusts it into the limelight and everyone becomes aware of it, the reaction can be violent, even overreactive (up or down).
I look back at GTEL that never flew anything but hot air... and OCTL that did nothing but put out PR's... and NTRZ that never fed a single person with their rice husk technology. All of those high flyers had nothing real. They sold nothing, yet they ALL topped $5.00...
Neoprobe actually sells something. Real products. Regular income. We have two real drugs in the pipeline. Sure... they could both fail and fizzle. That's a REAL risk. But at least they're tangible assets you can see, touch and feel. Those other companies had nothing but dreams.
I've never felt stupid holding NEOP. When we were at 20 cents I honestly couldn't understand why we were the only ones that saw NEOP's value. Now that it's tripled I feel good about my decision.
Right now, I'm even more convinced that some trigger, possibily interims... possibly a RIGS development... will thrust us into that limelight, and your traders and momo boys will do the same thing to NEOP that they did to GTEL, OCTL and NTRZ.
Will they take us to $1 - $3 - $5 - $7? I dunno... but I'm sure the initial run will have nothing to do with NEOP's real "value". It will all be due to rapid decompression, momentum and traders...
DDbuyer
Dutton update report - 07/01/2008
Neoprobe Introduces Enhanced Gamma Detection System And Confirms Phase III Clinical Trial Progress Of Lymphoseek.
Neoprobe announced last week that it has introduced an enhanced gamma detection control unit, the Neoprobe GDS (model 2300). This is the first device to be introduced under the development collaboration with marketing/distribution partner Ethicon Endo-Surgery that was announced last December. The Neoprobe GDS unit contains internal circuitry that enables it to communicate with the Company's new family of wireless probes without the necessity of an external adapter.
This new control unit is intended as an upgrade to and replacement for, the installed base of older generation control units (models 2000, 2100 and 2200), some of which have have been in service for more than ten years. We expect the collaboration to result in both new product flow and additional product enhancements in the future.
The first Phase III trial for Lymphoseek in breast cancer and melanoma was initiated on June 9, well within the time frame we anticipated in our June 6 Update Report. Management confirmed that at least five clinics were enrolling patients as of yesterday, and that a number of others will begin enrolling patients over the next two months. Approximately 18-20 total clinic sites are expected to participate in this ~200 patient trial, which is expected to complete enrollment by the end of this year. We anticipate launch of the second Phase III trial for Lymphoseek in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (~150 patients, with the potential for early stoppage) over the next few weeks. In our opinion, Neoprobe appears on track for a first half 2009 NDA filing for Lymphoseek and we anticipate commercialization of this first in class compound late next year.
link: http://www.duttonassociates.com/research/neop/notes/neop_note_070108.pdf
tonoos... thanks. I've bookmarked it. I always like Kevin's commentary.
DDbuyer
Nah. We don't screen anyone...
It's easy to come in. Easy to go right back out, too.
His leash is a lot shorter here. He just doesn't know it yet...
DDbuyer
wolfgang, try this link too...
http://www.hauck-aufhaeuser.lu/haig/pdf/fonds/fctsht_LU0172295916.pdf
clambottler... all of the questions you've asked...
... have answers available at the DD Blog posted in the iBox above.
Please take the time to review the Blog and the SEC filings. I assure you, all of your answers (including fleas and skeletons) can be found there.
DDbuyer
We had five sites in Phase II...
1) U.C. San Fran
2) M.D. Anderson
3) University Hospital - Cleveland
4) University of Louisville
5) John Wayne Cancer Institute
Are U.C.S.D. and U.C.S.F. the same? (under the same umbrella?)
I would assume the others will be participating, but I'm not certain.
When Bupp was referring to international participants, I thought he was talking primarily European locations, in support of the anticipated EMEA application.
DDbuyer
wolfgang... I emailed Medical Strategy...
... to ask if they could confirm their position in NEOP.
I received a response from Jürgen Harter in their PR department (relations@medicalstrategy.de), who said Medical Strategy is an external fund advisor to the VCH Expert Biotech Fund, and cannot disclose any detail about VCH's NEOP holdings.
I tried to dig up a contact for the VCH fund and came up with the name of Stefan Meyer, but I can't find any means to contact him. I sure would like to confirm that VCH is (or is not) a current NEOP holder.
DDbuyer
Yes. RIGS is considered in Phase III.
The BLA is technically open... although as a practical matter that doesn't mean squat.
RIGS needs a new confirmatory study to establish patient survival benefit, which is another Phase III trial... so it's been pushed back a step in the process.
Surprisingly, RIGS and Lymphoseek are now basically neck and neck in the development pipeline.
DDbuyer
NEOP has now made the PhRMA list...
With two drugs now in Phase III:
http://newmeds.phrma.org/results.php?drug=&indication=&company=2068&status=
This is the list the big boys keep an eye on...
DDbuyer
"You seem bearish on lil neop today, DD." - tonoos
No more than usual. It's funny... when the bashers start their BS some of us feel a need to defend NEOP... yet actually, nobody out there can bash it better than we can.
We know it so well. We know about the fleas, the downside, the skeletons in the closet. So, left to my own devices I'll waiver between a bullish and bearish outlook... and my posts will reflect that sentiment.
The bashers would see better and more honest "bashing" if they'd shut up and just let the informed longs do the posting.
DDbuyer
bidds & copper - yes, told them.
medchal is a great poster but he told me he's not a fan of iHub so I didnt bother him with it. Love to have him here though.
AAPL longs aren't unlike NEOP longs. (ouch!) The difference is they stay with AAPL because they're in love with it. We stay in NEOP because it's traded so thinly we can't get out, but tell ourselves we love it to make ourselves feel better! Isn't that the same? OK. Maybe not...
DDbuyer
True, each patient would likely do that...
... but you need to track every patient down to get anything statistically relevant.
If you found a dozen... or two dozen... or even three dozen patients and got their results... trying to use the results from such a limited sample pool to extrapolate for all the rest is very risky. A mathemetician would tell you that was crazy.
The stock hasn't moved from results. We haven't even got rolling yet. We moved on the funding, commencement, etc... not results. We're nowhere near seeing an effect on the stock from Phase III results... even if it does leak, I would think late July or August is the earliest we'll see that.
DDbuyer
Now that I think about it...
... leaking results ahead of time may not be as likely in our case. Remember, we're not doing the usual single sponsor trial. We're doing a multi-center trial with up to 20 institutions.
That's 20 docs you'll have to get to... and 20 docs you need to convince to sell their secrets and break the law. That's more unlikely. Impossible... no. Tougher... yes.
Even if you get to 1... or 2... or 3 docs, the information you get could be meaningless. Your information may not be statistically representative of the results across the board at all 20 of the institutions.
So.... we may not see much action ahead of time. Food for thought...
DDbuyer
I doubt you'll need a chart...
... to see the change in the stock action if the word leaks out. I suspect it will be obvious even to blind guys like me.
Nothing says that will be UP, either...!
She may tank. Many a drug looked good until Phase III, where it died a painful, bloody death upon impact with a brick wall. It happens...
DDbuyer
I'm not sure we're "hot" at the moment...
We were hot, but now we're sort of cooling our heels until interims IMO... then we might be hot again (or NOT). But let us know if your buddy sends out a NEOP watch to his 45,000 pals. That could be fun.
Speaking of interims, here's an interesting post of an older article that could have some bearing on NEOP stock price and our interim results:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Bombshell Seattle Times article about hedge fund kickbacks to physicians participating in drug trials, the most outrageous of which was a large sum paid to someone on the DSMB for ENCY's Phase 3:
Drug researchers leak secrets to Wall St.
By Luke Timmerman and David Heath Seattle Times staff reporters
Doctors testing new drugs are sworn to keep their research secret until drug companies announce the final results. But elite Wall Street firms — looking to make quick profits — have found a way to harvest these secrets:
They pay doctors to divulge the details early.
A Seattle Times investigation found at least 26 cases in which doctors have leaked confidential and critical details of their ongoing drug research to Wall Street firms.
The practice involves doctors at top research universities from UCLA to the University of Pennsylvania, and powerful financial firms including Citigroup Smith Barney, UBS and Wachovia Securities.
In 24 of the 26 cases, the firms issued reports to select clients with detailed information obtained from doctors involved in confidential studies. The reports advised clients whether to buy or sell a drug stock.
Trading stock based on secret information bought from medical researchers is illegal, say legal experts who were told of The Times' findings.
"That's a good way to go to jail," said lawyer Thomas Newkirk, former associate director of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Whether they are paid or not, medical researchers who talk with Wall Street about their ongoing research violate confidentiality agreements they sign before drug companies allow the drug testing to begin.
Until now, the selling of drug secrets has been hidden from securities regulators and the public, but biotech and Wall Street insiders said the practice is widespread.
"Everybody does this.... It's now common practice," said the chief executive of California biotech company Valentis, Ben McGraw, a former Wall Street analyst.
The practice of selling drug secrets, The Times found, is being driven by hedge funds, the largely unregulated investment pools that cater to the super-rich. Hedge funds can make money with aggressive strategies that exploit quick price swings in stocks, and the volatile biotech industry provides many such opportunities.
A single drug's prospects can determine whether a small biotech company's stock soars or plummets, so any inside information provides a potent investing edge.
Such information is so valuable that elite investors pay up to $1 million a year to firms known as matchmakers, which pair Wall Street firms with doctors involved in ongoing drug research. Gerson Lehrman Group, the largest matchmaker, claims to have 60,000 doctors available to speak to Wall Street, double the number from three years earlier.
How it works - How Wall Street gets the inside scoop on drug testing
Matchmakers typically pay doctors $300 to $500 an hour to talk to elite investors. Some doctors said they can make tens of thousands of dollars a year from such talks.
Drug-company executives say they know about the practice but can't crack down on the doctors they rely upon for conducting patient testing.
Ordinary investors are victimized when inside information is leaked to select investors. Those who know in advance whether a drug is going to succeed or fail can buy stock low or sell it high to those who don't know, making quick fortunes by taking advantage of unwitting investors.
And there is a broader cost to society: Leaking details about ongoing research can introduce bias into drug trials and possibly halt development of potentially life-saving drugs, biotech executives said.
"It appalls me, I must say," said Christopher Henney, a Seattle biotech pioneer who co-founded Immunex, now part of Amgen. "It's absolutely outrageous that they [researchers] would allow themselves to be corrupted in that way."
"The practice is a moral cesspool," said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "It really just seems to me to be the last straw in the corporatization of American medicine."
Doctors who divulge
Elite investors gained when doctors on a drug trial dropped the word that the drug was failing.
Excitement was building in fall 2002 at Isis Pharmaceuticals, a 300 employee Carlsbad, Calif., company, as it wrapped up a study of Affinitak, an innovative drug to treat lung cancer.
Timeline - UBS inside report sparks sell-off of Isis stock
Unknown to the company, however, analysts had started making calls to doctors testing the new drug. Despite confidentiality contracts, the doctors were talking.
By late November, Isis' stock price was plummeting on heavy trading; it lost 20 percent by early December.
A bombshell fell Dec. 6, and suddenly the drop made sense. Andrew Gitkin, an analyst at UBS, a big brokerage firm, issued a research report with a shocking revelation: Doctors on the Affinitak drug trial had talked to UBS and divulged that the drug was not working.
Gitkin's report sent Isis stock spiraling down even further.
Later that day, a news report confirmed that word of Affinitak's failure had "spread across Wall Street's biotech trading floors" for more than a week. Gitkin said in an interview that he believed he "wasn't the only analyst or investor" who had called the doctors.
That would explain why investors were selling Isis shares, driving the price down. Investors who knew the trial results in advance could have shorted Isis stock — a way to make money when its price falls — and made a quick 30 percent profit.
Isis chief executive Stanley Crooke, an M.D. with a Ph.D. in pharmacology, was furious.
"We were very shocked that somebody would try to do an analysis like that, shocked that any investigators would talk to an analyst and give him impressions and lead him to specific conclusions," Crooke would say later.
Crooke complained to UBS. He also questioned the doctors testing his new drug, trying — without success — to find the leak, he said.
Three months later, Isis released its Affinitak results and Gitkin's information was proved correct — the drug was a dud.
Gitkin said he did nothing wrong. "I don't know who does and who doesn't sign confidentiality agreements. ... I would assume that if they signed a confidentiality agreement they wouldn't talk to me."
Sometimes, hedge funds and brokerage firms pay one well-informed doctor to be quizzed by investment managers in a conference call. But other times, their approach to gathering valuable secrets about drug trials is more sophisticated and wide-ranging.
Timeline - Analysts foretell Eyetech's fall
Recently, Citigroup Smith Barney penetrated a major study to see how an experimental drug fared against a just-approved drug for treating macular degeneration, an incurable eye disease and the leading cause of blindness in the elderly.
The brokerage talked to 26 eye doctors, but they weren't just any doctors. Twenty of the 26 had researched the experimental drug; 23 of the 26 had researched the other one, meaning that more than half had worked on both. The doctors were able to give Smith Barney valuable comparative information.
Nearly all agreed that the drug still being studied, a product called Lucentis from biotech powerhouse Genentech, would prove vastly superior to the drug that recently had gone on the market, Macugen, made by Eyetech, a smaller company.
But the doctors were more explicit than that. Based on its survey, Smith Barney predicted remarkable results: 97 percent of patients on Lucentis would have stable or improved vision, as measured by how many lines of an eye chart they could read. Smith Barney summarized those findings in a report to select customers May 5.
As it turned out, the numbers were almost exactly on the money. On May 23, not long after Smith Barney's report, Genentech announced results from its Lucentis study: 95 percent of patients had stable or improved vision — just as predicted by the doctors Smith Barney talked to.
The announcement battered Eyetech's stock, which lost nearly half of its value in a day. Any hedge fund or other investor who had acted on Smith Barney's research by betting against Eyetech would have made better than a 40 percent return in just three weeks.
Dr. Scott Pendergast, a lead researcher in the Macugen study who said he doesn't speak to investors, was shocked when told of the Smith Barney report.
"That's definitely inappropriate," Pendergast said. "They're getting information that was not publicly available."
The Seattle Times interviewed 15 of the lead doctors on the Macugen and Lucentis research, many of whom acknowledged accepting money to talk to Wall Street firms. None specifically recalled talking to Smith Barney, but they said they had talked to many investors during the time Eyetech's stock price was in a steep decline.
All 15 doctors insisted they didn't reveal confidential or valuable details.
"People will call and ask 'Do you think this drug is working?' I'm just being asked to give my gut feeling," said Dr. David Boyer, a Los Angeles ophthalmologist.
"They'll ask what I can't answer," said Dr. Richard Rosen in New York City, who said he talked on the phone or face to face with investment firms about twice a day for $300 to $500 an hour.
"They're looking for results of trials that aren't out yet," Rosen said. "I can't answer that. I can just answer from my personal experience in how patients seem to respond to certain therapies."
Even so, Rosen acknowledged his experience can be valuable. "If you treat 20 patients you can get some sense of where a trial is going," he said.
Some medical researchers say they refuse to talk to hedge funds or stock analysts because they know the aim is to get confidential information.
Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic involved in half a dozen ongoing research studies and chairman of a federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel making recommendations on new drugs, said he gets "zillions" of calls from investors who say they simply want to talk about a certain disease.
"As soon as I hear the pitch I know what's going on," Nissen said. "The impressions of somebody on the trial are relevant to whether the trial is likely to succeed."
Dr. Ron Garren, who runs a small hedge fund in Carmel, Calif., and works part time as a cancer doctor, knows this. He admits he pays doctors in an effort to get confidential details about ongoing drug research.
"They really aren't supposed to talk because of confidentiality," Garren said. "But a lot of times it's a slip of a word here and there. You can generally tell from body language if a person running a trial likes the drug or doesn't. You can generally ferret out, if you're good, the safety issues."
One experienced research analyst at a major brokerage firm said he's studied "elicitation techniques" taught to FBI and CIA interrogators.
"We get them to talk about the weather, or the Mariners, then you pop in your one innocent question you want to know about," said the analyst, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used. "Then you switch back to whatever it was you were talking about before. When the doctor hangs up, he thinks he's had a nice conversation about the weather or the Mariners."
Hedge funds explode
A rapidly growing form of investment ramps up the pressure to gain inside information on drug research.
Powerful economic forces are driving the trend to pay for secret information. Years of a raging bull market were good to mutual funds. But when the good times on Wall Street ended in 2000, money began pouring into hedge funds in search of better returns.
Though barely a blip on Wall Street 15 years ago when they collectively managed less than $40 billion, hedge funds now manage close to $1 trillion — doubling in size in just the past five years, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research.
Unlike mutual funds, hedge funds aren't regulated and can take big risks, such as buying a stock with borrowed money or shorting a stock, a way to profit when its price falls. Hedge funds aren't satisfied keeping pace with an up-and-down market. They expect to make profits even in bad times and have a powerful incentive to do so: Fund managers get to pocket 20 percent of their funds' profits.
With such big payoffs for fund managers, the number of new funds has exploded, intensifying competition.
"As soon as money gets involved, it attracts people, and people go to greater and greater lengths to get an edge on their competition," said Joe Edelman, portfolio manager of Perceptive Life Sciences Master Fund, a $600 million biotech hedge fund in New York.
The way to get an edge on Wall Street is with better information, Edelman said.
"If everybody has the same scoop, it's not a scoop," he said. "People will go to great lengths and throw a lot of money around to outdo the next person."
The need for scoops has driven Wall Street firms to pay medical researchers to divulge secrets, said David Miller, who digs up information for his Seattle-based newsletter Biotech Monthly, but refuses to pay doctors.
"It's becoming standard practice" for hedge funds and brokerage firms to pay doctors, Miller said. "A couple years ago, this is something you would have seen as unusual. Today it's not."
Miller said the practice taints the biotech industry, allowing some with inside information to get rich at the expense of individual investors.
"What this has to do with is people who are so greedy in the market that they are willing to break all the rules to make money," Miller said.
Hedge funds have become some of the most active traders on Wall Street, accounting for as much as half of the trading volume in the New York Stock Exchange, according to Credit Suisse First Boston. Brokerage houses now scramble to woo hedge funds and their massive trading business. Not only do these funds buy and sell enormous amounts of stock, they do more complicated trades that are lucrative for brokerages, such as shorting stock.
One way brokerage houses attract the trading business of hedge funds is by offering them valuable research they can't get elsewhere, said Paul Latta, research director for the brokerage firm McAdams Wright Ragen in Seattle.
Even the best research analysts at brokerage houses agree it's difficult to keep up with the information that hedge funds are able to collect. Many hedge-fund managers are doctors themselves, some from the same elite medical schools as the doctors they are calling.
Quynh Pham, with Delafield Hambrecht in Seattle, was ranked by Forbes magazine this May as one of the top 10 research analysts in the country. Yet Pham, a microbiologist with an MBA, said when it comes to gathering information, "I really can't hold a candle to the hedge funds. They're able to do things that are unethical."
Delafield Hambrecht makes it a policy not to pay doctors for information, Pham said. But she talks to hedge-fund managers who do it all the time, she said, citing a recent example involving Seattle-based Cell Therapeutics.
Research on Cell Therapeutics' experimental lung-cancer drug was nearing completion early this year. Dr. Corey Langer, an oncologist at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, was in charge of testing, which included many patients in Eastern Europe. In the months leading up to the results being released, Langer was "hounded" by calls from the Wall Street firms seeking information, he said.
Through the firm Gerson Lehrman, Langer began charging $500 an hour to answer their questions. "I decided I'd rather get paid for giving my time," he said.
When he talked to elite investors, Langer said, he told them he couldn't divulge results of the study before the company announced them in March because he had signed a confidentiality agreement.
But he did share one critical insight with the investors who paid. Earlier, Cell Therapeutics had announced promising news that patients on the study were living longer. But during calls, Langer said, he cautioned investors that this early result might not be due to the drug, but rather to patients in Eastern Europe not being as sick as originally thought.
Word spread quickly. In Seattle, Pham at Delafield Hambrecht got calls from hedge-fund managers to see if she had dug up anything on the Cell Therapeutics study. One hedge-fund manager told her he already had called 20 medical centers in Eastern Europe, Pham said.
In the end, Langer's warning was right. On March 7, Cell Therapeutics announced its drug failed to prolong lives. Its stock plunged 48 percent that day. Any hedge fund shorting the stock after talking to Langer would have scored big.
Langer said he didn't know what his Wall Street contacts did with his information. "They don't tell me, and frankly I don't want to know," he said.
Enter the middleman
A new industry rounds up influential doctors who'll talk to investors — for a fee.
Hedge funds and mutual funds don't have to track down doctors on their own. There is now an industry built around paying influential doctors — referred to as "thought leaders" — to talk to them.
The pioneer in this field is Mark Gerson, who co-founded Gerson Lehrman Group in 1998 when he was 29 and attending Yale Law School. By then, he had already written a book on neoconservatism and was the subject of a flattering George Will column about Gerson's brief experience teaching at an inner-city Catholic high school.
Gerson used his networking skills to start Gerson Lehrman's "Council of Advisors" and now says its numbers have climbed to 60,000 physicians. Advisers agree to talk to hedge funds and mutual funds for an hourly fee, usually around $300 to $500 an hour.
Some doctors charge more. Dr. Celestia Higano, an oncologist at the University of Washington, said she raised her fee to $1,000 an hour to discourage investors from calling. After that, Gerson Lehrman sent her assistant an e-mail, urging that she lower her rate.
"At this rate Dr. Higano would become a reserved advisor, and therefore would be used more sparingly since her rate is above $500/hr," the e-mail said.
Gerson told The Times he charges investors a basic rate of $60,000 for six months of access to the firm's doctors. But hedge funds pay Gerson Lehrman up to $1 million a year for its most premium service, he said.
Brokerage firms also serve as matchmakers for their best clients by setting up conference calls with medical researchers. Typically, brokerage firms invite 10 to 40 hedge-fund or mutual-fund clients to participate in these calls, said Fariba Ghodsian, an analyst at a hedge fund in Los Angeles. Small investors don't have access.
In an interview, Gerson said his firm reminds doctors to honor their confidentiality contracts. He said he has never heard of doctors leaking confidential information through his service. Gerson said he does not believe they would do so because the doctors and his clients want to protect their reputations.
"Nobody that we've ever met wants to succeed financially in a way that would not honor their reputation," he said.
Tactics defended
Some involved say they're doing nothing wrong and are, in fact, performing a useful service to advance "promising therapies."
Defenders of the practice contend that most conversations with medical researchers are not efforts to ferret out secrets about clinical trials. Hedge funds and other investors said they often are collecting information on how doctors will use drugs in the market.
Albert Sebag, CEO of Clinical Advisors in New York, another firm that hooks up doctors and Wall Street firms, said physicians don't have any inside information from the companies.
"They just put patients on the study. They don't know what the patients are necessarily getting. The data is typically analyzed by a third party," Sebag said.
Many studies are "blinded," meaning that patients and in some cases doctors don't know who is getting the experimental drugs or something else, such as a placebo.
But hedge-fund managers said it often is possible to find out from doctors how a study is progressing, even when it is "blinded." That's because drugs can have obvious side effects that patients receiving a placebo won't get.
ImClone's Erbitux for colon cancer, for example, causes rashes. During ongoing studies, said Garren, the hedge-fund manager, he took advantage of that, calling cancer physicians who had experience with the drug.
Garren said he paid many of the physicians to talk and asked the same question: How many patients with rashes had their tumors shrink?
After talking to doctors at a few medical centers that enrolled the most patients in the study, he came away believing the drug would be a hit. However, Garren said he didn't act on the information until after the Erbitux results were publicly known.
Sometimes the Wall Street firms can hit the jackpot, getting details from a doctor who is not "blinded" at all and has access to complete safety data.
That happened in February, when clients of the brokerage firm Fulcrum Global Partners were invited on a conference call with two doctors involved in research for Encysive Pharmaceuticals, a small Houston biotech.
Timeline - Investors get an early scoop on Encysive
One of the doctors, Harold Palevsky of the University of Pennsylvania, sat on the study's data-safety-monitoring board, a group meant to protect patients. Board members aren't "blinded" and get complete safety data while a study is in progress, because their job is to shut down a study if patients start to suffer from dangerous side effects.
Members of data-safety-monitoring boards are sworn to secrecy to protect the integrity of the research. Yet, according to notes of the call later released by a Fulcrum analyst, Palevsky offered investors new and valuable information.
Encysive was testing a drug called Thelin for pulmonary hypertension, a rare and potentially fatal disorder of the blood vessels in the lungs. Earlier studies raised concerns that Thelin might be linked to serious bleeding or that it could damage the liver.
But, according to the analyst's notes, Palevsky assured investors that "the overall incidence of major bleeding events is rather low" across several Thelin trials.
Five days later, Feb. 14, Encysive announced the study had succeeded. Patients on the drug had no serious bleeding episodes.
That day, Encysive's stock surged 13 percent on the busiest trading volume in its history. Fulcrum analyst Patrick Flanigan boasted in a report that the results "are consistent with statements expressed by our physician consultants on a conference call we hosted last week."
Uzi Rosha, compliance director at Fulcrum, said the firm did nothing wrong.
"It was the doctors who had agreements with the company," he said. "It was their responsibility to make sure the conference call didn't contradict their confidentiality agreement."
Palevsky said he didn't reveal anything confidential, even though Fulcrum's report said Palevsky talked about information that had not yet been published.
"I am not responsible for what they say," Palevsky said "I spoke about data which had previously been published. Period."
Critics say drug-safety monitors such as Palevsky, with access to patient results, shouldn't talk to anyone, let alone Wall Street, about the research.
Palevsky defended his decision to talk to Fulcrum: "Why should I have not?"
Because talking about what you know as a safety monitor, said Penn bioethicist Caplan, is "about as big a no-no as you're going to get."
Breaking the law?
Courts have ruled that analysts can't coax someone to divulge company secrets.
Wall Street analysts argue they're doing nothing wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that because analysts don't owe allegiance to the companies they research, they are free to gather valuable information and pass it on to their customers. Analysts also are free to collect tidbits of data that, when pieced together, may amount to valuable information not available to the public.
However, the court also has ruled that analysts can't coax someone to divulge company secrets, which it called "misappropriating" nonpublic information.
John Coffee, an insider-trading expert and law professor at Columbia University, said that it is clearly illegal to trade stock based on information obtained by paying doctors to leak confidential material about research they are doing for drug companies. Paying 20 doctors to answer the same question about the same drug trial is not the same as collecting tidbits of data, Coffee said.
Misappropriating company secrets violates federal securities laws. And the practice of selling secrets is illegal for all parties involved, including doctors, hedge funds and research analysts, legal experts say.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, told of The Times' findings, said it had no comment.
Newkirk, who left his post as the SEC's associate enforcement director for a private law practice late last year, said he had not known about medical researchers selling confidential information to investors until The Seattle Times told him about it.
He knew of no SEC investigation of the practice. However, he said the examples uncovered by The Times were the kind of insider-trading cases he would have pursued at the SEC and the kind of cases the agency would pursue now if it knew about them.
Newkirk said the SEC should investigate the practice of selling drug secrets for a simple reason:
"Because people ought to know better. People in the securities industry ought to know better than to do things like that. Doctors who've accepted confidentiality agreements — they are the kind of educated people who ought to keep their word."
Luke Timmerman: 206-515-5644 or ltimmerman@seattletimes.com
David Heath: 206-464-2136 or dheath@seattletimes.com
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They track IP's with accounts. The system won't let you log in under two accounts from the same IP. That prevents multiple aliases... a tactic the basher used constantly to disrupt the other board.
DDbuyer