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Impressive. That means you own more shares than Wells Fargo, UBS, and Bank of America combined as of the last report.
There's also JP Morgan Chase which I think owns about 8000 shares.
You might want to consider getting a subscription for Level 2 quotes or finding a bank that provides them for you.
If you want to buy a lot of shares at once you will need to take a look at the entire order book rather than just the current best ask/bid, which tends to be very low volume.
Could be a seller that tried to sell 100 shares but only got rid of 95 and is now unloading the last 5.
Yeah I've noticed that too.
My guess is that it's a market maker running an algorithm.
Put in a buy order and it will put an order just above yours. Place your buy order about 5 cents or less below the ask price and it will immediately disappear and allow you to stay as the highest bidder. Remove your order and it will revert to its lowest bid.
I've even managed to get it to execute orders by placing my bid just below its limit price, where it will then sit until another order is executed.
I guess that's what you get when you're dealing with an illiquid stock like this. Big spreads and high volatility are to be expected and if you're patient you can use opportunities like these to load up on more cheap shares, and if you're not I hope you have the guts to not panic sell when the stock dips -10% on a day with no news.
I'd say fundraising, starting trials, and announcing results are what I would consider major events at this stage. Announcing a partnership would be huge too. First dosing though? I don't see what we as shareholders will get out of that except a pretty little press release that ultimately does nothing to the stock price.
Don't get me wrong, I very much appreciate the company making progress in different directions, it's just that some of these news are not exactly very important. One way or another, we know that at some point patients will be dosed.
You're right about the published phase 2 data though. That one will be exciting to read. Hopefully we'll know soon when the Fragile X study finishes too.
Except for a potential fundraiser, there really isn't much to look forward to this year except maybe a quarterly report.
Summer 2019 is when the fun really begins.
The way I see it, it looks like the FDA will let them skip Phase 1 for all new indications (I think Dr. Ryan also mentioned this as being a unique situation for him), since there are already so many studies confirming Bryostatin is safe at these low doses.
It's starting to look like the 20 dose could singlehandedly treat several different diseases alone since the consequences of the different diseases and the effect of the drug looks to be the same across indications (i.e. brain damage and brain repair).
In a way, you could call this a universal brain repair drug if the new trials all show the same synaptogenesis, or "rewiring of the brain".
Here's what I got from the presentation so far:
- Dr. Alkon mentioning Bryostatin possibly treating Parkinson's too (besides Alzheimer's, Fragile X, Niemann-Pick Type C, Rett, Stroke, TBI etc.)
- Dr. Ryan mentioning the Fragile X collaboration costing about $300,000
- Dr. Ryan talking about how more work needs to be done to educate the market and how Biogen seeing a $10 billion market cap increase is something they hope to see for Neurotrope too
- Dr. Ryan acknowledging that releasing the top-line data last year was a mistake and that they should have waited for the full data before making an announcement. They intend to learn from this experience and not rush out data after the next trial.
- They can and expect to do more than just one dosing cycle for patients in the future
- Synthesis of Bryostatin is very affordable due to how small the doses are, which means you don't need to produce a lot of the stuff
Neurotrope also needs to raise more funds before the trial is completed, so it makes sense why institutions are taking their sweet time to get in.
Maybe it'll be like last time where the stock price doubles a couple of months before results are announced.
Speaking of DD and share structure, feel free to take a look at all the new information that has been added to the ibox.
It will certainly be interesting to see what they do with all those warrants.
Keep in mind that Dr. Alkon has been granted patents for PKC activators as a whole instead of just Bryostatin.
Even if researchers find a more potent alternative, they won't be able to sell it.
Here's another recent study from Finland confirming our PKC activation theory: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30138694
"Abnormal protein kinase C (PKC) function contributes to many pathophysiological processes relevant for Alzheimer's disease (AD), such as amyloid precursor protein (APP) processing. Phorbol esters and other PKC activators have been demonstrated to enhance the secretion of soluble APPa (sAPPa), reduce the levels of ß-amyloid (Aß), induce synaptogenesis, and promote neuroprotection."
"Finally, bryostatin-1, but not HMI-1a3, increased the number of mushroom spines in proportion to total spine density in mature mouse hippocampal neuron cultures. These results suggest that the PKC activator HMI-1a3 exerts neuroprotective functions in the in vitro models relevant for AD by reducing the production of TNFa and increasing the secretion of neuroprotective sAPPa."
We'll see what the data says next year.
Until then, there's really not much else to do but speculate.
His age is certainly something to worry about, but if he suddenly kicks the bucket in the next couple of years I'm sure we'll still have a team of professional researchers ready to continue his work.
And don't worry about market share.
If this thing makes it through phase 3 trials, Neurotrope will pretty much have a monopoly on actually treating AD patients, rather than slowing the decline.
Not exactly. 20% is what Neurotrope would receive from gross revenues according to this hypothetical license agreement.
Basically:
- The patient pays $500/month for treatment
- $100 of those go to Neurotrope
- $400 goes to the company selling it, which has to pay for cost of sales
I guess technically that would make Neurotrope bring in $1.2 billion in revenues rather than earnings, but since they don't have to pay for the cost of sales, that money is almost 100% profit.
Even if expenses were to balloon up to $100 million/year, and we forget about tax credits (the company would then pay $231 million in taxes assuming a 21% tax rate), we would still be left with a yearly $869,000,000 net profit.
In this case a P/E of 15 would then make the company worth about $13 billion.
How much do I think this company will be worth if trials next year are successful? I think it could be anywhere between $1 and $10 billion.
It's hard to predict how the market will react (just look at the massive sell-off that happened after the last trial).
I think it's worth noting that the Fragile X trial might also be completed next year if they initiate it this year.
Any company that shows cognitive improvement in both AD and FXS patients will easily be worth several billions, considering the fact that no drug in history has ever shown cognitive improvement in these patients.
Here's how I see it. Let's assume that:
- There are 1 million patients receiving treatment each year
- Paying $500/month
This would bring in $6 billion in yearly revenues.
Let's say Neurotrope takes 20% of that through license agreements/royalties. That's $1.2 billion in yearly earnings.
Throw a P/E of 15 on top of that, and we have a valuation of $18 billion.
If they successfully complete trials for Stroke, TBI, and other neurodegenerative diseases, you can easily add another couple of million patients per year to the calculation.
Just for the heck of it, let's say they treat 5 million patients each year. Using the same calculation as before would then give the company a valuation of $90 billion.
And even once the patents expire and other companies desperately try to make this a generic drug, there's currently only one company in the world that can synthesize Bryostatin, and Neurotrope already has an exclusive license agreement with that company.
It's quite ridiculous really when you think about it.
Volume has completely flatlined lately for some reason, not to mention how huge the spread is. It's almost making me consider making a market with my own shares.
Then again, I really don't want to let go of any of them considering the volatility, even if only temporarily.
A 10,000 share market buy order could easily move this stock over + 100%
I took a look at the order book, and apparently it only takes a price of $8.95 (-4% from close) to sell 6000 shares, but if you want to buy 6000 shares, you need to go all the way up to $11.88 (+28% from close):
https://i.imgur.com/rubP7KG.png
IMO it looks like impatient retail sellers are keeping the price down as institutional buyers patiently wait for them to accept their bid prices.
For those of you interested in reading more relevant research articles, here's an updated link (that I have also added to the ibox): https://justpaste.it/5kdzs
Took me quite a while to bypass all the different paywalls and reupload the articles to a new host, but this list should now have significantly more articles to it than the previous one.
The man has been experimenting with Bryostatin for over a decade, so he definitely knows what he's talking about.
Here's some of his research from 2004:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15263077
Speaking of stock price, it looks like it has been following an upward trend for a while now:
https://i.imgur.com/hpbBVwR.jpg
The way I see it, there are two sides to this coin if the trial is a success.
On one hand, there are millions of patients waiting for a drug like this that are ready to pay, but on the other hand, we don't know how much dilution there will be before Neurotrope can stop relying on money from investors.
The Maxim report expects a Bryostatin market entry in 2023, which means that the company still needs to fund itself for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.
They seem to have enough funds to complete the confirmatory trial, but then they also need to find a way to fund a future phase 3 trial and a Fragile X trial.
In that regard, I expect that once Bryostatin hits markets, the company could have anything between 20 million and 30 million outstanding shares.
As for revenue, if the company treats 500,000 patients a year for $300/month, they'll be raking in at least $1.8 billion/year.
Throw a P/E of 15 on top of that, and you have a valuation of $27 billion.
Treating other diseases than AD will increase the amount of patients, but then again, they might also treat less than 500,000 a year.
It's all speculative at this point. Anything could happen in the next 5 years.
I'm not a scientist, so I'm not going to speculate on the probability of success.
However, I do think it's worth mentioning that positive signs from the recent Biogen AD trial led to a $10 billion boost in their market cap (before it eventually plunged after results proved to be ambiguous at best).
In the end, Neurotrope won't be bringing in any revenues until they have market approval, which means that valuations will be solely based on speculations until then.
Whether it's $1 billion or $10 billion, it all depends on what investors expect from Neurotrope in the future.
Considering that this trial is just about trying to replicate what was already achieved in the previous one, I'm not too worried about the results.
What worries me is how much the next fundraiser will dilute shareholders, and how the company will proceed after the confirmatory trial.
A BP partnership would certainly be nice, but I'm not too sure the biotech industry will just let a company like this stay independent.
If Bryostatin works as advertised, then we're essentially looking at a multi-billion dollar drug that can be acquired for less than $150 million if the company is bought out at the current price.
I just realized that I was looking at "Infusion site pain" instead of "Myalgia". My bad.
In that case, I take back what I said about myalgia. The only real side effect for the 20 dose seems to be diarrhea.
Thanks for the link. I'll make sure to add the study and the comparison picture to the ibox soon.
I took a look at it and it seems that Dr. Alkon was merely referring to the Namenda trial as an example for using SIB for severe AD patients rather than MMSE, which is only useful for mild/early AD patients.
I couldn't find anything about the current trial being compared to the Namenda trial though.
Oh, I think the link is already in the ibox. I'll take a look at it.
Alkon and the FDA have catered this trial for comparison to Namenda?
Where can I read about this? Would be interesting to see how they'll compare it.
Definitely, and I'm sure patients taking this drug won't care about its side effects, but people should still be informed about what they are putting inside their body.
Even Aspirin has warnings about potential side effects, no matter how minor and unlikely they are.
I'm not claiming Bryostatin is unsafe, but if Aricept is responsible for the diarrhea cases then they shouldn't include patients taking Aricept in future trials.
As for the myalgia, it may not be anything serious, but it's still something that should be put on the label as a potential side effect.
1 patient had their myalgia classified as a "serious adverse event", but there were also 3 patients that had their myalgia classified as an "other adverse event" (in the 20 dose arm).
There were also 5 patients in the 20 dose arm that got diarrhea during the trial.
Placebo arm had more serious adverse events than the 20 dose arm though, so I wouldn't worry about Bryostatin being dangerous.
As a patient however, I'd want to know if the Alzheimer's drug I'm taking has a risk of making me soil my pants and give me muscle pains.
There's always Aspirin, Advil or Aleve if Tylenol is not your thing.
Besides, the Bryostatin infusions are only made once every two weeks. I'm pretty sure affected patients won't mind taking regular painkillers twice a month compared to the alternative of having their brains wither away from Alzheimer's.
Myalgia and Diarrhea were the main side effects experienced by some patients in the trial, yes.
First one can be treated with Tylenol, and the second one with Imodium or Pepto-Bismol.
This is something that's got me wondering lately.
Pfizer HQ is just down the street from Neurotrope HQ, and if you look at press releases from both companies, you can see that Pfizer gave up on treating neurodegenerative diseases around the time Neurotrope published their analysis showing a statistically significant improvement in non-memantine patients.
I'm just making a wild guess here, but something tells me that Pfizer is ready to strike immediately once the current trial confirms that Bryostatin does indeed reverse cognitive decline.
So I took a look at Pfizer's financials, and found that they have $2.7 billion in cash.
They could easily buy out Neurotrope even if it hits a $1 billion market cap, and if competitors start a bidding war or the valuation goes up to something like $10-20 billion, they can just pay the rest with new Pfizer shares since the company is worth almost $250 billion.
Not to be a party pooper or anything, but APOE4 has been widely known to be an AD risk factor for quite a long time now. I personally remember 23andme including it in their reports back in 2015 when they were still having problems with the FDA.
I also looked through the references they have on their AD report page and none of them include Dr. Alkon.
He is getting referenced a lot in recent papers about Bryostatin though.
Here's some research showing how important the NMDA receptor (NMDAR) is for synaptic plasticity and memory consolidation:
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/np/2018/5093048/
"As shown by pharmacological studies, activation of GluN2B-NMDARs led to excitotoxic cell death in vitro and in vivo, whereas activation of GluN2A-NMDARs appears neuroprotective."
Makes sense why an NMDAR blocker like Memantine doesn't reverse any damage while an NMDAR regulator like Bryostatin does.
The way I look at it, Alzheimer's creates a toxic environment in the brain that kills brain cells, and by eliminating amyloid and tau, you are only cleaning up the waste products of the damage that has already been done, rather than fix what's causing the damage in the first place, which is the toxic environment.
In fact, if you look at this article, you can see how the whole synaptic formation process starts:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK5288/
It looks like in a normal human brain, diglycerides (DAG) are responsible for activating PKCe, which then activates a whole chain of neuroprotective processes that help us retain memories and make new ones.
With Alzheimer's however, something (possibly some form of genetic damage) seems to cause reduced PKCe activation, which throws everything out of balance and creates a neurotoxic environment in the brain, which causes brain cells to start dying and make us lose our memories and abilities.
Makes sense why Neurotrope is looking into PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids) as a more effective alternative to Bryostatin, since PKCe in a normal brain is otherwise activated by DAG, which is a PUFA precursor.
"As Alzheimer’s drug developers give up on today’s patients, where is the outrage?"
https://www.statnews.com/2018/08/15/alzheimers-patients-drug-development-outrage/
Having BlackRock and Renaissance Technologies onboard certainly gives a nice impression.
Then there's Neville Rodie & Shaw which bought shares for about a million dollars a month ago.
Based on how things look today though, I don't think this stock is going to see much action until results are released next year.
Should give us plenty of time to load up on more cheap shares though.
Here's what I got out of it:
- All lawsuits have been dismissed
- No new details on a potential fundraiser or beginning of Fragile X trial
- Cash is expected to last 13 more months
- Public float has increased from 5.9 million to 6.63 million since March, which is an increase of 730,000 shares
- Outstanding shares have increased from 7,907,527 to 7,909,693 since March, which is an increase of 2,166 shares
- 13,834 warrants have been exercised this year so far, bringing in $4,427
- 180,000 options have been granted and 0 options have been exercised this year so far
- Diluted share count has increased from 14,354,468 to 14,447,596 since March, which is an increase of 93,128 shares
I'll update the ibox to reflect these changes soon.