With the new cash, the market cap does not reflect much valuation for the IP.

Some time ago someone posted a schedule of market cap/shares outstanding illustrating price points where warrants start being in-the-money.

Can anyone point me to that?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Bob

This is exactly what I see as the the motivation for his disclosure. He needs to create the impression of options for the company.

Currently he has no real options, including another round of equity sales, so he has no leverage in negotiations.

The smart thing to do would be to agree to a deal on any molecule that will give him a decent up-front. The additional cash will give him the ability to negotiate a much richer deal on the other indications.

Bob

There is an alternative explanation to the apparent breach of confidentiality:

If Varney has only one suitor, but wants some leverage, he could want to get the word out that there is a second suitor without lying directly to his potential partner. What better way, assuming that information on a chat board has credibility in the boardroom, than to invent a conference call that the active suitor knows they are not taking part in.

Or does that give too much credibility to the influence of chat boards?

Bob

Thank you for the clarification.

The case, as you state it, is then entirely up to the discretion of the Exchange, with no hard-and-fast thresholds.

"(iv) has sustained losses which are so substantial in relation to its overall operations or its existing financial resources, or its financial condition has become so impaired that it appears questionable, in the opinion of the Exchange, as to whether such issuer will be able to continue operations and/or meet its obligations as they mature."

Presumably a deal that will give them enough cash to operate for a year, may do the trick.

I saw the 50 mil number bandied about and thought it was a mistaken target. It turns out that it is.

Regards,
Bob

The 50 million market cap is not the standard that needs to be met. It is the $6mil stockholder equity. As of the last quarter COR has minimally negative equity, so they need to raise around 7-8 million to avoid delisting. I copied the Amex rules below for reference.

It could also mean that an alternative is to raise the market cap to 15 mil (see second bold para below), but it is not clear to me that this rule is independent of the one immediately preceding it, or if they must both be satisfied.

Regards,
Bob

Sec. 1003. APPLICATION OF POLICIES

The Exchange has adopted certain standards, outlined below, under which it will normally give consideration to suspending dealings in, or removing, a security from listing or unlisted trading. When an issuer falls below any of the continued listing standards, the Exchange will review the appropriateness of continued listing. The Exchange may give consideration to any action that an issuer proposes to take that would enable it to comply with the continued listing standards. The specific procedures and timelines regarding such proposals are set forth in Section 1009. However, the standards set forth below in no way limit or restrict the Exchange in applying its policies regarding continued listing, and the Exchange may at any time, in view of the circumstances in each case, suspend dealings in, or remove, a security from listing or unlisted trading when in its opinion such security is unsuitable for continued trading on the Exchange. Such action will be taken regardless of whether the issuer meets or fails to meet any or all of the standards discussed below.

(a) Financial Condition and/or Operating Results—The Exchange will normally consider suspending dealings in, or removing from the list, securities of an issuer which:

(i) has stockholders' equity of less than $2,000,000 if such issuer has sustained losses from continuing operations and/or net losses in two of its three most recent fiscal years; or

(ii) has stockholders' equity of less than $4,000,000 if such issuer has sustained losses from continuing operations and/or net losses in three of its four most recent fiscal years; or

(iii) has stockholders' equity of less than $6,000,000 if such issuer has sustained losses from continuing operations and/or net losses in its five most recent fiscal years; or

(iv) has sustained losses which are so substantial in relation to its overall operations or its existing financial resources, or its financial condition has become so impaired that it appears questionable, in the opinion of the Exchange, as to whether such issuer will be able to continue operations and/or meet its obligations as they mature.

However, the Exchange will not normally consider suspending dealings in, or removing from the list, the securities of an issuer which is below any of standards (i) through (iii) above if the issuer is in compliance with the following:

(1) Total value of market capitalization * of at least $50,000,000; or total assets and revenue of $50,000,000 each in its last fiscal year, or in two of its last three fiscal years; and

(2) The issuer has at least 1,100,000 shares publicly held, a market value of publicly held shares of at least $15,000,000 and 400 round lot shareholders.

DCGN

A couple of more weeks. It's strange that management is just running down the cash - one would think that, if nothing was in the works, they would have gone CH11 some months ago.

Regards,
Bob

Dew,

Given their stated desire to be acquired, that venue should not be surprising.

Regards,
Bob

Corpstat,

My mistake in posting. I had forgotten how completely interesting this site has become and how relevant to my investment decisions it continues to be. I certainly don't want to disturb the zeitgeist here.

FWIW, I have no idea if QD or Dew are short here. I am not. Unfortunately I have missed the greatest shorting opportunity in the last decade by only having long positions over the last couple of years.

Regards,
bob

Houston Press article

No doubt that it is quite partial to Dunbar, but that does not make it untrue. Moreover, it is relevant because any current investor should know some of the history of Zonagen. Without the independent verification that might be provided by a partnership, much of credibility of the company rests on the credibility of management.

And the timing of its surfacing here - when RPRX stock price is not behaving like all the rest - is just a wee bit suspicious.

I suspect that, no matter what the behavior of the RPRX share price, you could have, and probably would have, made the same remark. It's a null statement.

Bob

My immediate reaction is that they are trying to do things on the cheap and in the hope to make the cash last a few more days.

Does this move make sense? I don't recall seeing this kind of announcement anywhere else. It may be a testament to JP's transparency or simply done to create buzz to raise the sp ahead of the offering.

If I recall correctly, weren't we counting on some of the enrollment in this trial to go towards the FDA's patient exposure safety requirement?

Regards,
Bob

The value if successful is so high that the current risk does not justify the current price.

That strikes me as a useless comment. There are so many things that can go wrong for the investor in a dev-stage bio, that there is no way to quantify the risk. We simply can't tell what all the pitfalls may be, much less put a number on them.

I have never seen a fan of a bio stock (and I include myself here as well) that has not grossly overestimated the potential value of his prize undiscovered gem when trying to apply metrics to its valuation.

Yes, I think we are undervalued. I also think that an important part of the job of management is to ensure that financing is done on decent terms. And I see Joe failing in this respect. I hope that I am proven wrong.

Regards,
Bob

Clark,

The important thing is that it would reduce the perceived investor risk, therefore support a higher share price for the stock sale.

Regards,
Bob

PS. Sidney, if the OT post was for me, all I need to say is that you need to consider the source of those assertions (and I'm not talking about the out-of-context COE ones.) The CBPP has an agenda a mile wide, and objectivity is not part of it.

With each passing day, we get closer to dilution, and that is getting baked into the pps.

An illuminating article by David Miller:

http://tinyurl.com/6p54wa

Makes you wish that Joe had gone for an SPA.

Bob

DCGN

Unfortunately, no numbers.

DG041 Blocks Platelet Aggregation Through a Novel Mechanism and does not Increase Bleeding Time When Given Alone or with Plavix(TM) or Aspirin
Monday June 30, 8:19 am ET

REYKJAVIK, Iceland, June 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- deCODE genetics (Nasdaq: DCGN - News) today announced positive topline results from its latest clinical pharmacology study of DG041, the company's first-in-class antagonist of the EP3 receptor for prostaglandin E2, developed as a next-generation oral anti-platelet therapy for preventing arterial thrombosis without increasing bleeding risk. The prospective, randomized, blinded, crossover study compared the effects on platelet activation and bleeding time of DG041 alone and in combination with the mainstays of current antiplatelet treatment, Plavix(TM) (clopidogrel) and aspirin. The results confirm previous clinical findings that DG041 inhibits platelet aggregation without increasing bleeding time as monotherapy, and further demonstrated that in combination with clopidogrel alone, as well as with clopidogrel and aspirin, DG041 provided additional antiplatelet effect without prolonging bleeding time.

deCODE's product development team will discuss the results of this study in detail at the company's annual R&D event to be webcast live today beginning at 1pm Eastern Time through the investor's page of the company's website, www.decode.com.

"These findings underscore the potential of DG041 as a next-generation oral anti-platelet: a compound that can reduce the risk of thrombi formation without increasing overall bleeding risk. While the current standard of care, clopidogrel and aspirin, has been shown to be effective in decreasing the risk of blood clots leading to heart attack and stroke, they do so in an untargeted manner and thus raise the likelihood of unwanted bleeding. By targeting EP3, which we identified through our human genetics work in peripheral artery disease, stroke and heart attack, DG041 has been shown to offer a novel approach to inhibiting platelet aggregation where it is needed -- at the site of lesions in the vasculature. One of the most compelling results coming out of this study is that DG041 was shown to substantially inhibit EP3 mediated platelet activation that is not being addressed by current therapy. This suggests that DG041 may have a favourable profile not only as a first-line therapy, but also as a combination therapy with existing standard of care. We are encouraged by these results and look forward to advancing DG041 into later stage trials with a strategic partner," said Kari Stefansson, CEO of deCODE.

About DG041

deCODE's medicinal chemistry group discovered DG041 as a means to prevent arterial thrombosis by inhibiting the activity of EP3. In Phase I and Phase IIa clinical trials and follow-on clinical pharmacology studies, DG041 has been shown to dramatically inhibit platelet aggregation as well as platelet activation mediated specifically through vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP), a biomarker useful for measuring platelet activity. Following deCODE's gene discovery work linking this pathway with arterial disease, work by leading international scientists demonstrated in mice that PGE2 is produced in atherosclerotic plaques, promoting the formation of clots immediately at the sites of plaque but not over normal blood vessels. The formation of these thrombi is dependent on signaling through EP3. This pathway is left largely unaffected by existing anti-platelet drugs such as aspirin and Plavix(TM). deCODE is actively pursuing partnership opportunities for the latter phases of the clinical development of DG041.

Creationist/Intelligent Design

The questions were poorly phrased and the results are worthless, IMO.

1- Humans developed over millions of years, God guided
2- Humans developed over millions of years, God had no part
3- God created humans within the last 10,000 years

#3 is not an ambiguous question. It is pure creationism.

#2 is not an ambiguous question. It is pure evolution, but with a twist - it requires atheism.

#1 is ambiguous and a religious person would choose it even if they believed that evolution is an appropriate description of how species evolve.

The religious person would argue that God had everything to do with it since he/she set the whole mechanism in motion by establishing physical laws for the universe.

That said, I am also surprised that the survey had such high percentages of #3.

Regards,
Bob

self-serving narratives

Or any, for that matter?

It seems to me that a self-serving narrative would include at least some allusion to a competing bid to justify the price paid.

Regards,
Bob

Drug company sales

There was a detailed description of the sale published as an SEC filing, and no other bidder was mentioned.

In '04 Lilly filed a similar document describing the purchase of Applied Molecular Evolution. It is a fascinating read. It also mentions no competing bidders.

Regards,
Bob

You don't need many prospective buyers ... Two or three potential buyers

My experience and knowledge of how public companies get sold is pretty limited. I do have experience with privately-held co acquisitions and negotiations.

From what I have seen, it is typically not the case that you get potential bidders competing. A seller is usually lucky to get one interested buyer and the final price is a function of which of the two parties is more interested in making the deal.

Hardly an efficient market.

Regards,
Bob

the market for buying and selling drugs and drug companies is generally quite efficient.

Isn't part of the requirement for an efficient market that there be sufficient liquidity? If so, a market in drug companies has few sellers and even fewer buyers.

I would argue that this is an even more inefficient market.

Regards,
Bob

Clark,

"1) Hysterectomy mortality rate? (best estimate is about 0.2% mortality rate - not chicken feed. At 600,000 per year, most of which would be avoidable with Proellex, that is 1,200 women per year)."

It may be a quibble, but the number of Hysterectomies impacted by Proellex is about 57% of the total surgeries (fibroids 39%, endometriosis 18%). this also impacts you point#2.

Keep on trucking.

Bob

". I am not sure why they felt the need to release this "partial" result"

Because he is mentioning it at the conference and REGFD'd it.

THE WOODLANDS, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Repros Therapeutics Inc. (NasdaqGM:RPRX - News) announced today that the Company’s President and CEO, Joseph Podolski, will present a corporate overview on Thursday, May 29, 2008, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time at the FBR Capital Markets’ 12th Annual Spring Investor Conference.

Another interesting question might be why he is at an investor conference. Could it be primping up for a financing?

Regards,
Bob

OT - Taxes

Sidney,
The claim was that tax revs are constant over time, independent of the limit of the marginal tax rate. This was true in the US.

If there was a global claim, I would think it was mistaken. (A counter-example would be a totalitarian state with strict controls of the economy which could impose ANY tax rates it chose.)

The point is that in the US people find ways to defer/shield income, hence that constant. The more important point is that tax revs are a function of GDP, so we should be concentrating on GDP growth. This point appeals to me and seems intuitively true, but I don't think that the article proved it, beyond simply noting the correlation. Obviously, this also brings up the question of how one proves any causality in economics.

With regard to the per-capita GDP/tax rate question and your attempt to make it into a discussion of ethics, it will need to wait for another day. I'll just note for the record, that on this scale (High tax = high morality) the US is a much less moral place than France and Russia, and a much more moral place than Australia and India. And on a related note, since I live in NYC and I pay marginal taxes of 50% on my company's income, I will walk with my head held high, radiating goodness. 8-)

Regards,
Bob

OT - Taxes

From the maligned WSJ opinion pages

http://tinyurl.com/5zf7zp

You Can't Soak the Rich
By DAVID RANSON
May 20, 2008; Page A23

Kurt Hauser is a San Francisco investment economist who, 15 years ago, published fresh and eye-opening data about the federal tax system. His findings imply that there are draconian constraints on the ability of tax-rate increases to generate fresh revenues. I think his discovery deserves to be called Hauser's Law, because it is as central to the economics of taxation as Boyle's Law is to the physics of gases. Yet economists and policy makers are barely aware of it.

Like science, economics advances as verifiable patterns are recognized and codified. But economics is in a far earlier stage of evolution than physics. Unfortunately, it is often poisoned by political wishful thinking, just as medieval science was poisoned by religious doctrine. Taxation is an important example.

The interactions among the myriad participants in a tax system are as impossible to unravel as are those of the molecules in a gas, and the effects of tax policies are speculative and highly contentious. Will increasing tax rates on the rich increase revenues, as Barack Obama hopes, or hold back the economy, as John McCain fears? Or both?

Mr. Hauser uncovered the means to answer these questions definitively. On this page in 1993, he stated that "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP." What a pity that his discovery has not been more widely disseminated.
[You Can't Soak the Rich]

The chart nearby, updating the evidence to 2007, confirms Hauser's Law. The federal tax "yield" (revenues divided by GDP) has remained close to 19.5%, even as the top tax bracket was brought down from 91% to the present 35%. This is what scientists call an "independence theorem," and it cuts the Gordian Knot of tax policy debate.

The data show that the tax yield has been independent of marginal tax rates over this period, but tax revenue is directly proportional to GDP. So if we want to increase tax revenue, we need to increase GDP.

What happens if we instead raise tax rates? Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax rate hike will reduce GDP, in which case Hauser's Law says it will also lower tax revenue. That's a highly inconvenient truth for redistributive tax policy, and it flies in the face of deeply felt beliefs about social justice. It would surely be unpopular today with those presidential candidates who plan to raise tax rates on the rich – if they knew about it.

Although Hauser's Law sounds like a restatement of the Laffer Curve (and Mr. Hauser did cite Arthur Laffer in his original article), it has independent validity. Because Mr. Laffer's curve is a theoretical insight, theoreticians find it easy to quibble with. Test cases, where the economy responds to a tax change, always lend themselves to many alternative explanations. Conventional economists, despite immense publicity, have yet to swallow the Laffer Curve. When it is mentioned at all by critics, it is often as an object of scorn.

Because Mr. Hauser's horizontal straight line is a simple fact, it is ultimately far more compelling. It also presents a major opportunity. It seems likely that the tax system could maintain a 19.5% yield with a top bracket even lower than 35%.

What makes Hauser's Law work? For supply-siders there is no mystery. As Mr. Hauser said: "Raising taxes encourages taxpayers to shift, hide and underreport income. . . . Higher taxes reduce the incentives to work, produce, invest and save, thereby dampening overall economic activity and job creation."

Putting it a different way, capital migrates away from regimes in which it is treated harshly, and toward regimes in which it is free to be invested profitably and safely. In this regard, the capital controlled by our richest citizens is especially tax-intolerant.

The economics of taxation will be moribund until economists accept and explain Hauser's Law. For progress to be made, they will have to face up to it, reconcile it with other facts, and incorporate it within the body of accepted knowledge. And if this requires overturning existing doctrine, then so be it.

Presidential candidates, instead of disputing how much more tax to impose on whom, would be better advised to come up with plans for increasing GDP while ridding the tax system of its wearying complexity. That would be a formula for success.

Mr. Ranson is head of research at H.C. Wainwright & Co. Economics Inc.

+++If I wanted 65,000 shares I certainly would buy $10 calls and excercise, +++

If that is the intent, it's cheaper to buy in-the-money calls. I don't think you have it right.

Genetic testing

The pick-and-shovel companies like ILMN, AFFX, ABI and the companies that market tests like Navigenics, 23andMe and Decode should, in theory, benefit. Of the latter list only Decode (DCGN) is traded.

I am skeptical of the business model for the testing companies, given the cost of the tests and vagueness of the results.

see:

http://tinyurl.com/5ddour

Which Genetic Tests
Are Really Worth Getting?
By ANNA WILDE MATHEWS
May 1, 2008; Page D1

With Congress poised to eliminate a big barrier to genetic testing for risk of certain diseases, consumers still face challenges in figuring out which ones offer useful information.

Despite heavy marketing by some genetic-test makers, the wide use of genetic tests has been held back by a variety of factors, including questions about the tests' usefulness and concerns that results could be used by employers and insurers to discriminate against people. Critics argue that many tests can't accurately identify which people are at risk for various illnesses.
[23andMe is among the companies offering genetic information to consumers.]
23andMe is among the companies offering genetic information to consumers.

But genetic researchers say that certain genetic tests are valuable because they do tie closely to particular medical conditions and patients can help their health by acting on the tests' findings.

Among tests that have broad support among doctors are a breast- and ovarian-cancer test that looks at genes known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, and a colon-cancer test that examines three genes linked to a form of the disease known as hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer, or HNPCC. The tests are generally given only to patients who, due to family history and other factors, appear likely to carry the problematic genes.

Kenneth Offit, chief of the clinical genetics service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, says that when these tests signal a genetic risk, patients can take action. In the case of the breast-cancer test, for instance, he recommends that patients get yearly magnetic resonance imaging scans starting at the age of 25, rather than relying on typical mammograms that often start in the mid-30s. If the colon-cancer test results show a danger, he urges patients to begin annual colonoscopies at 25, rather than the typical practice of having a first one at 50.

Gene tests associated with a number of relatively rare diseases have also won general acceptance. One detects a condition called factor V Leiden, which is associated with an elevated risk of blood clots. Brian F. Gage, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests the test for women with a strong family history of clotting problems who are considering taking birth-control pills, which also carry a clotting danger. If a woman does have the risky genetic variant, he would urge her to consider different contraception.
GENETIC INFORMATION

[Resources]
Here are some places to learn more about genetic testing.
www.genetests.org: Offers information about genetic tests and their use, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.
www.egappreviews.org: A project from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that is supposed to evaluate the role of various genetic tests.
www4.od.nih.gov/oba/sacghs.htm: A federal committee that advises the Secretary of Health and Human Services about genetic testing; it is expected to release a new report Thursday.
www.louise.house.gov: The site for a member of Congress who backed the new genetic nondiscrimination bill, which has explanations of what it will do.
www.dnapolicy.org: An academic public-policy center that focuses on genetic testing.
Here are coverage policies for two major private insurers: Cigna |Aetna

New congressional action is expected to boost the tests' appeal. The House was expected as soon as Thursday to pass a bill that will bar employers and insurers from discriminating based on genetic makeup. The long-stalled legislation won a unanimous Senate vote and is expected to get President Bush's signature. The insurance provisions are set to take effect a year after the bill is signed, while those dealing with employers kick in after 18 months.

But newly interested consumers will find a confusing landscape, with an array of companies marketing more than 1,400 different genetic tests, sometimes with little evidence. Unlike new drugs, lab tests typically aren't reviewed by federal regulators before they go on the market. In a draft report last year, a federal advisory committee called for more oversight of genetic testing; a final version is supposed to come out Thursday.

Many new genetic tests -- even those based on well-regarded research -- have so far won only limited support from medical groups. Genetic researchers say this is often because the genes don't account for a large portion of the disease risk, or the tests' results don't clearly justify changes in patients' behavior.

Major insurers such as Aetna Inc., WellPoint Inc. and Cigna Corp. say they're generally not paying for broad genome reviews or tests that they believe fall into the unproven category, such as ones that are supposed to signal a predisposition toward Type 2 diabetes, early heart attacks or prostate cancer.

Very-well-established genetic checks, such as the BRCA test, do tend to be covered for patients who meet certain criteria. The federal Medicare program, which isn't mandated to include screening technologies, doesn't typically pay for genetic tests meant to detect disease risks.

Tests are often pricey, costing hundreds of dollars. "In the common diseases, there's more predictive information today in knowing family members had it than knowing" the results of the newly developed genetic tests for such conditions as Type 2 diabetes, says David Altshuler, a professor at Harvard Medical School.

For instance, it isn't clear how much patients can learn from current genetic tests designed to signal heart-attack risk, beyond standard measures such as blood pressure that are already checked by doctors, says Teri Manolio, director of the office of population genomics at the National Human Genome Research Institute. "It's just way too early," she says.

On the other side, Jianfeng Xu, a professor at Wake Forest University who helped to research a prostate-cancer test highlighted this year in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, says he believes that the test can be useful for patients with a family history of prostate cancer. It will be more powerful, though, when scientists can distinguish whether the risk is for more-aggressive form of the disease, says Dr. Xu, who has co-founded a company that will market the test.

Kari Stefansson, chief executive of deCODE genetics Inc., an Icelandic company that markets an array of genetic tests as well as a broad genetic scanning service, says tests for such conditions as Type 2 diabetes are important, partly because negative results may convince consumers to try healthier behaviors. "All preventative medicine is based on the assumption that you can raise concerns," he says. "Are these guys telling me it hasn't been worth measuring cholesterol all these years because other factors also affect heart disease?"

Some researchers say they are also skeptical of the health value of services that broadly scan patients' genetic patterns.

"You get a lot of information, but very little knowledge," says Howard McLeod, a professor at the University of North Carolina. Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe Inc., a company that markets genetic information to consumers, says she agrees that "it's still the early stages of what the clinical utility is," but some consumers are interested in their genetic makeup.

OT

Sidney,

You forgot to mention this quote from the author:

"For many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a 'must win,' but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a 'can't win.'"

Bob

PGS,

You are forgetting the vast amount of wealth creation (and job creation) in non-public companies. As we increase taxes on capital gains we decrease the incentive for entreprenuerial investment in new companies and in the growth of existing ones.

This decreases the tax base and the economic health the country.

Bob

DCGN

Market cap now <90 mil, EV ~270 mil. As I watch the share value circle the drain, it is hard to find an amusing side to the investment.

The following was, however, irresistible (from the YMB):

DeCode's discovery of the NR1 gene for schizophrenia some years ago is what this company is ALL about. Schizophrenia drugs are used for a lifetime.

My guess is that DeCode may have one new drug in the works for this application. That alone makes holding this stock almost like holding a MegaMillions lottery with only one digit unknown.

Goldman Sachs knows it. Heck, I read where the entire Icelandic currency was being shorted so that DeCode can't use the loan from the Icelandic people......that's HOW BAD BIG MONEY really wants this company!!

Semi-OT

Is there a sector risker than biotech?

Sex and financial risk linked in brain

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - A new brain-scan study may help explain what's going on in the minds of financial titans when they take risky monetary gambles — sex. When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler, university researchers reported.

The arousing pictures lit up the same part of the brain that lights up when financial risks are taken.

"You have a need in an evolutionary sense for both money and women. They trigger the same brain area," said Camelia Kuhnen, a Northwestern University finance professor who conducted the study with a Stanford University psychologist.

Their research appears in the current edition of the peer-reviewed journal NeuroReport.

The study only involved 15 heterosexual young men at Stanford University. It focused on the sex and money hub, the V-shaped nucleus accumbens, which sits near the base of the brain and plays a central role in what you experience as pleasure.

When that hub was activated by the erotic images, the men were far more likely to bet high on a random chance game that would earn them either a dollar or a dime. Each man made more than 50 gambles under brain scans.

Stanford psychologist Brian Knutson, a lead author of the study, says it's all about the power of emotion and arousal and our financial decisions. The trigger doesn't have to be sex — it could be chocolate or a winning lottery ticket.

"It didn't matter if the sexy woman didn't tell you anything about the odds of winning a roulette game," Knutson said. "What really matters is that the sexy woman is having an emotional impact. That bleeds over into your financial decisions."

Kuhnen said the same link could hold true for women, but they didn't test it because it is more difficult to find an erotic image that would appeal to many different heterosexual women compared to heterosexual men.

The link between sex and greed goes back hundreds of thousands of years, to men's evolutionary role as provider or resource gatherer to attract women, said Kevin McCabe, professor of economics, law and neuroscience at George Mason University, who wasn't part of the study.

"Risk-taking is a natural way of increasing your relative success, but, of course, there's a downside to it, what we're seeing right now in the economy," McCabe said.

The results of the study jibe with the real life on the trading floor, said Phil Flynn, a former Chicago commodities floor trader and current analyst at Alaron Trading Corp.

"I'm not shocked that it may be part of the deal," Flynn said Friday. "When you talk about all the euphemisms for trading (on the floor), they can be used for sex as well."

("Massaging the market" and "hardcore" were about the cleanest that he and his colleagues could come up with.)

The study conforms with recent research that indicates men shown a pornographic movie were more likely to make riskier sexual decisions. Another suggests straight men think less about their financial future after being shown pictures of pretty women.

One still-to-be-published study at Harvard University found a link between higher testosterone levels and financial risk-taking.

But the study conducted at Stanford, funded by the National Institutes of Health, went deeper, using functional magnetic resonance imaging machines. It's part of a new but growing field called neuroeconomics that attempts to take the hard-wired science of brain biology and mix it with the softer sciences of psychology and economics to figure out why we make the financial decisions we do.

An earlier study by the same team found that the brain's reward area lit up at about the same time as risky decision-making.

The erotic pictures experiment was designed to find which was the cause and which was the effect. The answer: Lighting up the reward area, in this case with soft-core pictures, caused the risk-taking, Kuhnen said.

"The more activation there you have, the more prone you are to taking more risk," Kuhnen said. "It could be a feedback loop."

The flip side was that the photos of snakes and spiders activated the portion of the brain often associated with pain, fear and anger. And those people were more likely to bet low.

This all makes sense to Harvard economist Terry Burnham, author of the book "Mean Genes." Burnham said it could be all summed up in a famous line from the movie "Scarface."

"In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women."

rkrw,

That's why I contend that it's a short unwinding.

Regards,
Bob

Nerf,

My best guess is that this is an easy out for a large short. Will a similar situation obtain with RPRX? I hope not. Let the shorts cover on the market.

Regards,
Bob

In contrast to the wealth of information which you provide. See an example below.

I will be staying away for a while. The villagers are gathering up their pitchforks.

> Really guys, the more you stand on thse pedandic arguments the more you seam like robot pumpers.

Really guys, the more you stand on these pedantic arguments the more you seem like robot pumpers.

Yep - the bashers are human. Surely a robot would use spellcheck?

Nerf,

I was the one who asked. You are stating that the bleeding was 2x that of normal women and the P got them back in normal range. Do you know this independently of the PR, or are you inferring form the PR? If the latter, this is not a valid inference.

Thanks,
Bob

When they were allowed to menstruate the women had bleeding that was 48% of the baseline - heavy bleeding due to the disease process- so in order to compare to normal they would have originally had double the bleeding of a woman in "normal" cycle terms. Correct?

No.

The bleeding severity, as measured by daily diary cards, was 48% less than the pretreatment baseline

They cite pre-treatment baseline for the treated women.

dewophile,

After the first three-month double blind treatment phase of the study was completed, menstruation commenced a mean of 21 days after treatment was stopped. The bleeding severity as measured by daily diary cards was 28% less than the pretreatment baseline;
After the first four-month open label treatment was completed, menstruation started a mean of 24 days after treatment was stopped. The bleeding severity, as measured by daily diary cards, was 48% less than the pretreatment baseline.

- How reliable is the self-reporting in this setting, especially in an open-label situation.

- Also, does the 48% reduction put the patients with normal range?

TIA,
Bob

He is telling you that those decimal places don't make approval a sure thing, hence the reading comprehension comment.

You don't need him to tell you this. If you thought this was a slam-dunk (pardon the reference) this would be your only long position. In fact you and all the other longs here are mitigating risk by diversifying. So the whole "debate" is more about a pissing match than about substance.

That's my take, FWIW

Bob

The SPA program is only about 4 years old and NDA's files with it have only recently been coming up for review, so you are not going to have a lot of data points. Many (the great majority?) of NDA's files since its inception are filed with it, so comparable data is not going to be easily obtained.

The SPA program is not a guarantee anyway, since the FDA can back out of any particular SPA. It has on at least one occasion, though I don't remember the specifics.

What an SPA does tell you is that there has been extensive communication between the sponsor and the agency, so there should be no surprises with regard to performance expectations and endpoints.

It seems to me that if much of your emphasis is on "de-risking" then you file the SPA.

Regards,
Bob

You guys are pretty funny. If I were Dew, I would be flattered by the flurry of responses.

Since when is the "slam-dunk meter" a benchmark in bio investing?

Dew has opinions. They are generally well thought out, but they are opinions. Take them as such. You might give them more or less credence than you would someone else's opinion, but they are not hard facts.

BTW, I'm not sure of the relevance of the GTCB performance to Repros or to Dew's credibility - we've all had uderperforming investments.

Regards,
Bob

OT Clark

Thank you for pointing out how DNDN's protocol change had a negative impact on the pts where provenge showed the best hazard ratio - at the tail end. It made perfect sense and I appreciated the quick insight.

On reading that I sold my remaining shares yesterday, just in time to buy some more Repros just before the drop 8-(

Regards
Bob

In the Synsorb suit I think I got something more than a token amount - maybe about 10-15¢ on the dollar. But that is the exception.

Regards,
Bob