You have to be impressed with how this company has handled debt. If this goes down like the article says, that partnership with Pharma for Prurisol will fund Kevetrin. Perhaps no dilution, which will benefit those who hold the float. Oh, that's us.

That's how I view it too. I usually am not the first in but like to see a little progress before I jump. I still consider this early but congratulations to those of you that got in much earlier and already have substantial gains. Especially if any of you got in on that dip on Dec 27, 2010. 10 cents a share - Wow!

Truthbythought - When I was about 8 years old my 2 brothers and I slipped away at dusk to go ice skating on the Mississippi River. It was against our parents stern warnings. We skated out with the idea of going all the way across. But far from shore we heard the ice start to give way - the big river was readying itself to swallow us up. That is about the same feeling I have in trying to answer this question. I had no business on the river at that time and I probably have no business in tackling this question.

That said, it is a question I've been poking around at for a couple of days myself. My biggest reassurance is the team we have pursuing this. Also, it is very important that the prior art referenced but one of 24 claims.

I've also been poking around in the Manual of Patent Examining Procedures, Eight Edition, Revision (August 2012), where I find many reasons that everything could be just fine. It would take the education of a patent attorney and review of many cases to feel totally comfortable. For what it is worth, here are a few of the concepts from the manual, which provide me with some reassurance, albeit from the viewpoint of a complete novice.

Broad leeway to the applicant:
"During patent examination, the pending claim must be given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification."

Inherency:
" The fact a certain result or characteristic MAY occur or be present in the prior art is not sufficient to establish the inherency of that result or characteristic."

In reference to inherency the old patent stated ..."the compounds may also be used in the treatment or prevention of psoriasis." I believe that was the only reference to psoriasis in the entire document.

Derivation:
"The mere fact that a claim recites the use of various components, each of which can be argumentatively assumed to be old , does not provide a proper basis for a rejection. Derivation requires complete conception by another and communication of that conception by any means to the party charged with derivation prior to any date on which it can be shown that one charged with derivation possessed knowledge of the invention. Communication of a complete conception must be sufficient to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to construct and successfully operate the invention."

On the issue of derivation, virtually the entire old patent is directed toward HIV, herpes etc., not psoriasis.

Obviousness:
"Presence or absence of Prior Art suggestion of method of making
a claimed compound may be irrelevant in determining Prima Facie Obviousness. If the prior art fails to disclose or render obvious a method of making a claimed compound, at the the time the invention was made, it may not be legally concluded that the compound itself is in possession of the public."

On the obviousness issue - the prior patent is pretty oblique on Psoriasis. If the compound existed we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Enabling:
"In Enzo Biochem, Inc. V.Calgene, the court held that claims in two patents directed to genetic antisense technology, were invalid because the breadth of enablement was not commensurate in scope with the claims."

" All questions of enablement are evaluated against the claimed subject matter. The focus of the examination inquiry is whether everything within the scope of the claim is enabled."

There are many enablement cases both in favor and against the applicant. But it seems to me the psoriasis claim of the old patent was never pursued. Overly broad patents appear to be viewed with skepticism as I feel they should be. In other words, if you say something you need to bring it about.

To my untrained eye, Prurisol is a unique formulation that passed muster on 23 of its claims. It would seem there is a good chance to argue the 24th on some of the issues above and maybe more. A good patent attorney might make the case.

Hope that helps. But man, I better get back to shore. What is that crack in the ice running right between my skates? Time to split.

Just to add a little to what BK said in his post - I was perusing the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure Revised Feb 2003, put out by the U.S. Department of Commerce. This is the so-called rule book for Patents. LoanRangers question, like so many, does not just jump out with a clear cut answer because the question is never asked that way in the manual. But an answer does emerge from related material. So, here are a few excerpts that get to the point:

Page 2200-69 section G. Claim Interpretation and Treatment: "original patent claims will be examined ONLY on the basis of prior art or printed publications applied under the appropriate parts of 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103. .... (In re Yamanmoto, 740 F.2d 1569,222 USPQ 934 (fed.Cir.1984)).In a reexamination hearing involving claims of an expired patent, which are not subject to amendment, a policy of narrow construction should be applied. Such a policy favors a construction of a patent claim that will render it valid; i.e., a narrow construction, over a broad construction that would render it invalid.

In the original text the word ONLY is italicized for emphasis but I couldn't figure out how to do it on the IHUb site so I made it caps. We know expired patents are printed material so they are prior art but so are unexpired patents. In other words, expiration is irrelevant.

I included the Yamanmoto ruling because there has been discussion in some posts about the narrowness, i.e., limited number of conditions outlined in the application. This case may have something to do with it. Narrow is good where prior art exists.

Page 2200-67 section B. Matters other Than Patents or Printed Publications. "Rejections will not be based on matters other than patents or printed publications, such as public use or sale, inventorship, 35 U.S.C. 101, fraud, etc.... A rejection on prior use or sale, insufficiency of disclosure etc. cannot be made even if it relies on a prior patent or printed publication.

In other words, it has to rely on just a patent or prior publication. Expiration of a previous patent and everything else are not considered in accepting or rejecting the claim.

For what its worth. Now, I need to go find some other obtuse regulation to read.

Thanks for the street cred wild4nano. But no I am not Mary Tyler Moore!

In thinking some more about this, maybe it isn't a surprise that it was "lost" in the shuffle to come up with something for HIV. If you think back to that period that was the focus of about any researcher who was linked to the issue of AIDS in some way. Why not go after that instead of psoriasis - probably an easy choice. You might just end up with a Nobel Prize. But I still think it is amazing that no one ever returned to pursue it.

Maybe we should all take up perusing expired patents for forgotten gems. Reminds me of an article I read the other day on rare earth elements. All these electronics etc. need them and they are in short supply worldwide. So the U.S. government starting looking at discarded rubble from old mining sites. At one in Nevada the discard was full of Indium because the miners didn't care about it and wanted silver or copper or something. Makes you wonder how much rubble is in the old patents. Now if they were only easier to read...

I think there is some relevant info in the link Whooops provided. Click on the link and then look at the gray box on the right and you will see an "also published" # for the patent (CA 1340589C). Click on that and from there you can download a 42 page copy of the old patent, which happens to be the European version. At the top you can click through the pages. Go to page 5. Look at lines 26 and 38. 38 specifically notes psoriasis. Line 26 refers to a set of compounds labeled I that comprise the invention. Now back up to page 4. There you will see three variations of a hydroxy group (line 15) that attach at the R1 site of the molecule shown just above it. It has been 39 years since my college chem classes but "A" would seem to correspond to 23 as listed in the new Purisol patent. I think this may be the problem with 23.

It is kind of amazing that the inventor noted psoriasis in the old patent but never pursued it. If the new patent is granted we can all thank inventor Susan Mary Daluge for apparently being so focused on HIV etc. that it was not pursued. Wow. What a complete gift! Of course there are many more derivatives that Dr. M has pursued but it is pretty clear she thought there was applicability in psoriasis. Maybe this is the real surprise - not that it was just derived from a known molecule but the application was known or at least suspected.

That really is the bottom line isn't it? And good luck Magicatlast!

Had out of town visitors last night and we had an interesting conversation about biotech stocks. I told them how much I liked all my stocks because of the type of work they were doing. I was asked an interesting theoretical question - if I like them so much would I be willing to forfeit all my investment in them if all they were striving to accomplish came true. While I would rather have that happen without the forfeit, I have to say I would forfeit all my investment if it would all could come true. Because in my way of thinking one of these conditions from the diverse areas my biotechs are involved in is bound to affect me or someone very close to me sooner or later. In fact it already has. People have different financial capacity but I could take the hit and be alright. So yeah I would do it. Having said that I sure am glad that was a theoretical question but it did cast a new perspective on just how important this work is.

I just want to thank whoever put this board together. It has the best charts of any my stocks on iHub

Me too. I guess there could be terms where you just can't say no but there is so much potential here that you wouldn't want to sell yourself short. Leo knows this when he talked of the $10 billion potential so I think any offer would have to be very substantial to entice L and K if things pan out in the studies.

Good chance to fill the gap tomorrow.

I jumped twice. 5000 sh at 4.36 followed by 5000 sh at 3.96. Took my average down 51 cents and now I am green instead of red.

At least we know now why the uplist has not happened.

Don't know for sure but it sounds to me like they need to improve their board. The exchanges require so many independent board members. Since you cannot just appoint anyone, they will need to search for highly qualified people and that would take an indefinite period of time.

I agree Dane. And that does not include the possibility of a PR. These gaps act in mysterious ways!

It was a narrow window to add. I picked up an odd lot as my entire order did not fill. I got 3234 @ 1.92

Yeah, I've been looking at that all day. If this is an exhaustion gap my feeling is it probably will fill.

Buccaneer - It is hard to say for sure. Typically companies are not valued at a 1:1 ratio of price to book value (assets- liabilities). The market often applies a premium as it is forward looking. I did a quick check of some pharmas for their P/BV ratios. PFE is at 2.53, J&J is at 3.64, PCYC is at 17.22, Merck is at 2.76. So it seems the more established companies are in the 2 to 3 range while upstarts can be quite a bit higher, depending on how their prospects are viewed by the market. The share count is important because you will want to use the BV per share. The liabilities are pretty nominal at this point for CTIX, but let's say it brings the BV down to 9.99B by using 10M for liabilities. If we use 140M shares the BV/sh =71.35. So, if we use P/B similar to the big companies above, say 2.5, the price would be $178.If you went as high as PCYC for P/BV, it would be $1228. This seems unlikely to me but it is not unreasonable to expect a premium, instead of just a 1:1 ratio. With the excitement and their pipeline, maybe something like 4. That would yield a price of $285. Wouldn't that be nice! No one really knows for sure.

Progressive - Thanks for the welcome. I agree and the beauty of it all is there is Prurisol sitting there like a petulant stepchild given all the attention K is getting. P may just be a blockbuster in its own right. I read some posts on here about potential other uses for P should it gain the approval for Psoriasis. There are related diseases that potentially could extend the franchise. Makes sense and if the patent for P is anything like the one for K they will have many closely related compounds covered.

Also, I am intrigued by their early efforts with the Autism drug. Not an easy condition to take on and yet the early work seems promising. And they are not talking about treating symptoms but changing the brain so it functions normally. This company has an amazing pipeline for such a small company. Well that is post #2 of my allotted 3. I wonder how long it will be before I get moved up to 15 posts as indicated on the website.

Thanks for pointing that out BK. I was going to respond yesterday but as a newbie I am limited to 3 posts a day and had used them up. I have to be very judicious with my posts until someone approves me for more. Anyway, yes my error was to just lump leukemia together as if it is one disease instead of a disease with many variants. K562 is myelogenous leukemia, for which K appears to be a quite an effective drug. There are other leukemias I was looking at in the patent for K (acute lymphoblastic leukemia, promyelocytic leukemia) where the cell lines are resistant to K. That said, this drug has amazing reach across tumor types. Well that is post 1 for today.

Thanks tootalljones. I remember too tall jones. He was something. Anyway, I noticed your post about accumulating more. I am thinking along the same line after reading all the stuff in the patent and that Whoops sent along.

Whooops, Thanks for the welcome and the attachments. I just finished going through them and they are much easier to get through than the patent. In so many ways this is an amazing molecule. I can't wait to see what comes next. And then there is Prurisol...

Hi all. New to the board but CTIX is my largest holding of any of my 6 biotechs. My life must be a mess because I spent a long time just now perusing a largely incomprehensible document (at least for me) - the patent for K. Even Proust would roll over if he could see the length of some of those sentences! Anyway, after downloading a special TIFF file reader, I was able to look at the images, which were slightly more comprehensible. It is interesting to see the graphical depictions of K vs. Capistan, Taxol etc. Pretty efficacious drug.K is not effective against everything (eg., leukemia) but as we have been told, the solid tumor results are amazing. K is very potent in some areas (lung, colon, ovarian, gliomas). The length of time the drug was effective as measured by tumor size was also impressive. Also, the tolerability as measured by weight loss in mice was "acceptable". Anyway, it was good for me to see the data as I have read comments by skeptics that essentially ask "where's the beef?" because they can't find a published research paper. Well, I just waded through the beef and came away very impressed with the science and results.