I guess "investors" are hurting but I haven't had such a day
since THPW said yes to .265 AM and .35 PM. One thing is clear
maybe nothing to note maybe a straw in the wind: this issue
is no longer trading by appointment, and I'm damn glad because
dead money is a really tough row to hoe.

But it could be a flash in the pan on the news, no question.

Stuff made the point well on Y!--the story can't do the job
now. The firm needs a financial miracle by year-end or it will die.

According to Warren Buffet those who are not
capable of accepting a 50% loss should not be
in the stock market to begin with.

> Around eighteen cents a share pre split.
Decent trade last time.

rFVIII item

Octapharma Targeting The Major Risk Of Hemophilia Treatment - FVIII Antibodies

Article Date: 27 Aug 2009 - 1:00 PDT

Octapharma AG is leading an international initiative focused on confronting the major risk associated with hemophilia A therapy anti-factor VIII (FVIII) antibodies, also known as inhibitors. This initiative, combined with Octapharma's efforts to pursue the first recombinant FVIII therapy produced from a human cell line, could dramatically impact the treatment of an estimated one in every 5,000 to 10,000 men born with hemophilia A worldwide. Globally, 75% of the hemophilia cases go undiagnosed or untreated.

Octapharma AG, the third largest plasma products manufacturer in the world, recently brought together many of the most respected blood coagulation disorder researchers for two symposia on this important issue during the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH) Biennial Congress in Boston. Octapharma was one of only five Platinum Sponsors at the ISTH Congress, which attracted approximately 7,500 representatives of the medical and research community as well as many patients.

Clinical experts noted during the symposia that up to 40 percent of previously untreated patients (PUPs) with hemophilia A develop the most serious clinical complication of FVIII replacement therapy - inhibitory antibodies - which can result in uncontrolled hemorrhage, increased hospitalizations and joint damage, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality.

"We brought the international community together to confront this issue because our worldwide commitment to hemophilia A patients dates back to Octapharma's formation 25 years ago," said Octapharma AG Vice Chairman Kim Bjornstrup. "Our first therapies were developed for the hemophilia community and today most hemophilia patient advocates say that inhibitor development is the greatest obstacle to effective treatment. Octapharma is focused on introducing innovative development strategies that will help improve patient quality of life by finding an effective treatment and developing products to overcome this obstacle."

The Octapharma-sponsored symposium "Prevention and Eradication of FVIII Inhibitors: Bridging Lab and Field Research" was chaired by David Lillicrap, M.D., Professor of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, and Georges E. Rivard, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics at Universite de Montreal. The symposium provided an opportunity for discussing recent data supporting the use of von Willebrand factor (VWF)/FVIII concentrates for Immune Tolerance Induction (ITI) in hemophilia A patients with poor prognosis for a successful ITI outcome.

Presenters reviewed a balanced mix of clinical, preclinical and basic data on the role of the presence of VWF in FVIII concentrates and the clinical experience on prevention and eradication of FVIII inhibitors. In addition, the most recent prospective and retrospective clinical data obtained with different classes of FVIII concentrates used for ITI treatment were presented along with an update on the progress of the ongoing prospective study designed to further investigate the risk of FVIII inhibitor development in previously untreated patients with hemophilia.

"A growing body of clinical experience suggests that VWF-containing pdFVIII concentrates increase the likelihood of successful tolerization, particularly in patients with poor prognostic factors," said symposium presenter Wolfhart Kreuz, M.D. of the Hemophilia Comprehensive Care Centre at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany. "Successful ITI leads to normalization of the FVIII half-life, allows fully effective on-demand replacement therapy and prophylaxis, with consequent improvement in the patient's quality of life and a marked reduction in the cost of treatment."

The Octapharma-sponsored symposium "From Humans to Humans - Introducing the First Recombinant FVIII Produced From a Human Cell Line" was chaired by Edward G.D. Tuddenham, M.D., Director of The Katharine Dormandy Haemophilia Center & Thrombosis Unit in London, and Johannes Oldenburg, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman and Director of the Institute of Experimental Haematology and Transfusion Medicine in Bonn, Germany.

"Twenty years after the start of clinical trials with rFVIII concentrates expressed by hamster cells, a new rFVIII compound has recently entered clinical studies," Dr. Tuddenham said. "The primary goal behind the development of this new rFVIII was to reduce the overall immunogenic challenge (and resultant inhibitor formation) to the hemophilia patient during rFVIII replacement therapy. An essential part of this strategy was the development of a human rFVIII protein expressed in a human cell-based protein expression system instead of using existing hamster-derived cell lines."

The symposium highlighted the benefits of using a human cell-based protein; preclinical characterizations and some of the functional properties of the first recombinant factor VIII (rFVIII) from a human cell-line; and the planned global clinical development program with the new rFVIII derived from human cells. The investigational new drug application for Octapharma's human cell line rFVIII was filed in the U.S. in May 2008. Clinical trials started in Russia in Spring 2009 and are expected to start in the U.S. later this year. Additionally, Octapharma has other recombinant human cell line products in various stages of development.

During the symposium, possible advantages of using a human cell line for recombinant FVIII production were presented. Those include the absence of the rodent antigenic epitopes Gal-1,3-Galactose and N-glycolyl-neuraminic-acid on the FVIII-protein, which could lead to a reduced immunogenicity compared to currently marketed recombinant factor VIII products that are all derived from hamster cell lines and also to a potentially increased tolerability.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/161992.php

>who holds the patent?

No patent exists--it an application.

The assignee is

Sterrenbeld Biotechnologie North America, Inc.
Wilmington
DE

You could have looked it up yourself by searching on
the application number at the patent office:

http://patft.uspto.gov/

Recent patent application regarding insulin

Process for producing exogenous protein in the milk of transgenic mammals and a process for purifying proteins therefrom

The invention relates to a non-human transgenic mammal that is useful for the production of a protein of interest that may be toxic to the mammal. The mammal is characterized by the fact that it is transgenic for the production in its milk of an inactive form of the protein of interest, preferably recombinant human insulin. It is not possible to produce recombinant human insulin in transgenic mammals since this molecule has a certain degree of biological activity in the mammals and could be toxic to the mammal. Thus, the invention involves cloning a genetic construct comprising a sequence encoding a modified human insulin precursor under the control of a beta casein promoter in an expression vector. It also involves transfecting the expression plasmid into fetal bovine somatic cells, such as fibroblasts, and enucleating bovine oocytes by nuclear transfer to generate transgenic embryos. The invention gives rise to transgenic bovine that will be able to produce a modified human insulin precursor in their mammary glands. Afterwards, the milk of these transgenic mammals can be collected, the modified human insulin precursor can be converted in vitro into recombinant human insulin, and the recombinant human insulin can be purified to homogeneity as a pure biopharmaceutical product. (end of abstract)

http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20090723ptan20090187999.php

I didn't think voting was worth the time, but I did garner
a dividend by shredding the mailings and composting them.
Pity the C/N ratio was so much higher than that of management.

If you don't like annoying phone calls why are you a
shareholder of record? Scripophily? The only other
reason I can think of is concern about phantom shares,
a subject you have never broached.

(iii) stop billing Merrimack for barn and bale.

>I assume that you are trying to be clever

The fact remains minority
interest (fully diluted) is minority interest
because it voted for suicide last December. Sure there could be
a lawsuit--so what? It would be without merit, as DD
has observed in typical able fashion.

P.S. GS, RTN please note that cannot reply to your PM's.
GS--main play now HCN. RTN--I missed the big move in INSM.

You don't have to Shylock to parse "libel" from "liable",
nor to understand that common equity can't sue to recover
what it threw away with its own hand.

>I consider this as great news<
I don't. Existing equity is being sold down
the river (as usual).

Pumphead story

I just joined Life Extension Foundation. One of the perks is
a copy of "Disease Prevention and Treatment, Expanded
Fourth Edition" (ISBN 0-9658777-5-2). Excerpt therefrom:
_________________________________________________________

Stephen Whiting, Ph.D., states that although the odds of surviving bypass surgery have improved since the operation was first introduced, the risk of experiencing a decline in mental function following surgery has remainedd consistent since the 1980s. Signals of this type of decline may include difficulty following directions, mood swings, and short tempers. [Sounds like me.] Many doctors have downplayed the importance of alterations in intellectual abilities that occur in about 50-80% of patients following bypass surgery, believing the decline to be temporary. It now appears a transient display of incompetency my predict an increased risk of intellectual instability several years later.

Researchers (reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine followed 261 bypass patients for 5 years. Enrollees in the study underwent intellectual testing before and after surgery, as well as at the 6-week, 6-month, and 5-year interval. Intellectual function declined by 20-53% considering presurgical and postsurgical mental status. The decline was 36% at 6 weeks and 24% at 6 months. In 5years after surger, 41% of the patients had experienced neurocognitive impairment. The researchers concluded that an intellectual decline in patients following heart surgery was signicantly associated with diminished mental abilities 5 years postsurgery.

That's easy--every time he has been specific he's been wrong.
This has been going on for years, and as I noted in the
Dewmsday clock thread we are supposed to see new equity
capital this month. His (black) swan song, I hope.

> I can't imagine he would have lied<
Why not?

If you miss the clock (I do--the shock of seeing how fast
days go by did me some good) here is a rationale for its
reinstatement:

"We are actively engaged in discussions with new and existing investors to refinance the company through the sale of equity or debt securities and we anticipate completion of a transaction in the second quarter of 2009." (Q1 10-Q)

> GENZ was seriously considering its right of first approval for the US market.<
You mean right of first negotiation, something that
never was material and always was almost meaningless.

>it is simpler to target specific glycosylation sites you want modified in a construct (as they outline here) than to modify the factory(goat) which in turn will alter not just the glycosylation of your product, but glycosylation states of every protein in the whole damn goat.<

Because such global transformation entails the possibility
of unexpected untoward consequences?

>it interacts, e. g., binds heparin tighter than wild type ATIII<

Do I have this right, the steric change makes the normally
concealed moiety (hook) out and about more of the time?
Like with smaller pillows under your hindquarters and
shoulders your back spends more time arched in the preferred
curve?

>these shares were given to the employees as some kind of payment<

Correct, although technically members of the board of
directors are not "employees".

OK I was in my cups when I posted that.
I bow with respect, sincerely.
On the other hand I did get the hell out of
Dodge on 11/3/08.

This thread should get deleted, but in the meantime
I want to shake my tambourine for HCN. Demographic shift
has been at the front of the fundamental parade for twenty
years but now those chickens are flying home. Sure there
is some political risk but the trade looks very good to me.

Everybody talks their position. Re GTCB we are
in complete accord, ie bearish.

Sounds right.

>more likely that a huge cash ball from outer space will land in GTC’s parking lot.<

Exactly. Per msg 7721 dated 2/7/2008:

>the hope that a twenty ton
platinum meteorite ruins the pasture--imo a hazard comparable
to getting 50 million up front from our US HD partner.<

I find intercourse with lactating human females extremely
therapeutic. Since almost all humans have a few mutations
("genetic load") and many if not most of these derive from
human artifice (radon from concrete, etc.) it seems to me that
there is a case to be made that we are all transgenic to some
degree and so GTCB is entitled to royalties in train of such
discretionary sex acts.

For further elucidation of this point kindly note
http://drfray.edublogs.org/2009/03/29/generic-viagra-cialis-levitra-%C2%BB-assessing-biosimilars-in-wont/

> the 12 years until the 2021 expiration of GTC’s milk patent<

Time flies when you're having fun. I agree that effective monetization of the firm's intellectual estate in-house is no longer something present management is capable of, and perhaps out of reach of a competent team. I have made the point more than once that IP is a wasting asset so that time is of the essence in valuing it. No muscle, no hustle and vice versa.

It's nice to have one's view eventually ratified by someone of your ilk.

Meanwhile the bird guys are keeping busy:
http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20090319ptan20090074718.php

On vacation from GTCB, probably permanently, but I have put
too much dilly into this story to just walk away. I have
seen this as a lottery ticket ever since the convert--just
too hard to figure. Before that I traded it but considered
my inventory an investment, after that purely a trade.

Depending on what happens after present equity becomes
minority interest it might become an investment again,
and I might get back in. At present it is too close to an
arb play for me to stomach, so I am on the sidelines for
the next few months. This was risky stuff in normal times
and those are history. I've given up try to guess off the
macro picture. I have a levered position in HCN that I'm
being squeezed out of by slow degrees. That's where my
capital and judgement are occupied--I have none of either
left over for pennies.

I'm still scanning patents and the like and will post stuff
that looks germane the the story here, eg
http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20090226ptan20090053210.php

> why bother following developments if you think gtcb is doomed?<

Some enjoy being right publicly (cf. msg 17590).

This is a very interesting thread. I am not coming in
to throw my scant weight around, but I will *pronounce*
that freaking out over 100 share prints is tinfoil cap
crap.

Look I don't give a damn if anybody thinks I'm a big dog
or a little dog. I turn several million USD monthly and
want to hear what y'all have to say about Sogotrade.

>(they are hiring, by the way, so either that means someone important left or that they are getting bigger<

No, the fact that they are advertising for staff does not
entail any intention of increasing the head count. The
front door swings both ways.

>Collusion is illegal and if it can be shown that Cox and LFB colluded to allow LFB to takeover GTCB on the very cheap ($0.31!!) then I think that could be the basis of a lawsuit by shareholders<

No, you are overstating the case and making a semantic error.
To assert that "collusion is illegal" is tautologous if read
narrowly and false if read broadly. There is a crime called
collusion just as there is a crime called arson. To say
"collusion is illegal" when one means by "collusion" the
crime of that name is analogous to saying "the crime of arson
is illegal". Doh! If you mean by "collusion" two people who
get together and hatch a plot to achieve some mutually sought
object and proceed to take action in pursuit of their common
goal, that need not be criminal. It is only so if they are
acting in concert to achieve an illegal goal.

The tacit and facially problematic premise in your remark
is the legality of what they are about--it is by no means
obvious that so shafting the existing owners is in any way
illegal. There is the matter of breach of fiduciary duty
on the part of Cox but that is in the first place a civil
rather than criminal issue and in the second sufficiently
nuanced that his defense would be a cakewalk. If such a
combination ensued it would do so in train of a fairness
opinion rendered from an independent appraisal by an entity
well resourced and well experienced in such matters. That
you as disgruntled shareholder or rider in a posse of such
took extreme exception to such appraisal would not in itself
carry any weight. You would have to positively show that
the appraisal was materially deficient, which would be next
to impossible unless it were, and that possibility is remote.

It's a mean old world, like it or not.

>Lewis I started to explain RSI but I realized you
probably invested it LOL.<

If you meant to write "invented" it, no it was
"[d]eveloped by J. Welles Wilder and introduced in his 1978 book, New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems."

Nor do I invest it. It is a trend analysis tool and
trends are not my friends but my mortal enemies. Trends
are for boys--men trade noise.

Something to read as well, even if you are drunk:

"Only half in jest, the variation of prices on stock and commodity exchanges may be said to raise a geometric problem, since the newspapers' financial pages are full of advertisements by self-styled "chartists," who plot the past suitably and proclaim thay can predict the future from those charts' geometry.

The basic counterclaim, first asserted in 1900 by Louis Bachelier, is that charting is useless. The most assertive statement is that successive price changes are statistically independent. A milder statement is that every price follows a "martingale" stochastic process, meaning that the market is "perfect": everything in its past has been discounted fully. An even milder statement is that imperfections remain only as long as they are smaller than transaction costs; such markets are called "efficient." Bachelier's notion of efficiency has proved extraordinarily accurate.

A more specific assertion by Bachelier is that any competitive price follows, in the first approximation, a "one-dimensional Brownian motion" B(t). The fact a process so fundamental to physics has been invented by a maverick mathematician is worth remembering...Sad to report when actual data became available, B(t) turned out to represent them very poorly. The present chapter describes an alternative description, which I constructed on the basis of a scaling assumption (one of the earliest to be made in any field). It proves astonishingly accurate.

THE DISCONTINUITY OF PRICES

My simplest anti-Brown argument is based on an experimental observation that is so plain and direct that one may be surprised that is should prove fundamental. But the arguments which earlier chapters use to show that D>2 for galaxies and D>2 for turbulence are also surprisingly plain and direct. The unsophisticated observation is that a continuous process cannot account for a phenomenon characterized by very sharp discontinuities. We know that Brownian motion's sample functions are *almost surely, almost everywhere* continuous. But prices on competitive markets need not be continuous, and they are conspicuously discontinuous. The only reason for assuming continuity is that many sciences tend, knowingly or not, to copy the procedures that prove successful in Newtonian physics. Continuity should prove a reasonable assumption for diverse "exogenous" quantities and rates that enter into economics but are defined in purely physical terms. But prices are different: mechanics involves nothing comparable, and gives no guidance on this account.

The typical mechanism of price formation involves both knowledge of the present and anticipation of the future. Even when the exogenous physical determinants of a price vary continuously, anticipations change drastically, "in a flash." When a physical signal of negligible energy and duration, "the stroke of a pen," provokes a brutal change of anticipations, and when no institution injects inertia to complicate matters, a price determined on the basis of anticipation can crash to zero, soar out of sight, do anything."

--The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Ch. 37

I had heard about this Mandelbrot stuff but I thought it was some kind of Swedish pumpernickle. I'm really learning a lot
from you market mavens, like the RSI stuff. I went and looked that up on google and found out it stood for "repetitive strain injury" also known as "cumulative trauma disorder". That really put GTC into perspective for me.

I think that was me--I asked TD Ameritrade to take 25K out
of my account and they said it would produce a confirmation
that I could use to document the writeoff. They waived the
fee; maybe that's a good sign, huh?

I have some in some Zecco accounts and they sent me a form
that asks for the Cusip Number--does anybody know if it has
one? The form has two options:

If there is no transfer agent I assert that and ask for a non-negotiable certificate
of ownership which they give me and I can later use to
re-establish my street name position (in the event the firm
reopens its transfer books). As I understand it
this doesn't amount to proof of worthlessness but simply
clears the account of the position so it can be closed or
ACATed to a different broker (with no transfer agent they
can't register the shares to me and "deliver and ship" a
certificate). Interestingly they normally charge a pretty
stiff monthly fee for carrying a non-transferable security
in an account but they haven't been charging me that--very
mysterious, no?

The other option is to simply sell them the position for a
dollar so as to secure the writeoff.

I am confused about the transfer agent situation. It says
here on the board precis that there is none, but then later
lists one. So what's with that? Is the one listed the former
but no longer agent? If so why not say so; that would make
your presentation consistent. I am looking to close one of
those accounts so I will probably sell for a dollar unless
you guys think that there might someday be some recovery by
us bagholders, in which case I might take the non-negotiable
certificate.

Tia for any info and/or advice.

>A currency counterfeiting machine would be more helpful.<
Doubtful. Jim Rogers recently remarked that he had been
short long govvies but covered with a modest loss after
Helicopter Ben said he was a buyer: "He's got more money
than I do." Given that Ovation's lead product is crystal
meth I should think the indicated solution obvious.

> In ten or so years whoever controls their NPPP will be one of the biggest companies in the world because they control this technology.<

They had better be, because in ten or so years the IP enters the public domain.

>GTCB is having financial difficulties and this will prevent any advancement for the company and investors<

Yes.

>Will GTCB seek public financing now that they have a product that is approved?<

Yes.

>anyone who suggests that ATryn will be used off-label to a non-trivial degree does not understand the reimbursement process for US drugs.<

Mercy, please. I was being too fussy about facticity,
please stop rubbing it in.

> happened to be on the computer to check in on GTCB when approval was granted and then the big decline occured. I saw a chance to buy so set up a limit order for $0.69, but as I checked the price it dropped lower. I reset the order at $0.65 and then again it dropped below that when I checked. I then set one up for $0.62 so and entered it but I must have just missed since it was never filled.<

"Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs get butchered."

I'm not looking to lord it over you, you know me better
than that, but you have been offered an invaluable lesson.
Take heed. When stuff like that happens is the wrongest
possible time to get tricky. I'm not saying go at market,
that's asking for death, just blow off those pennies. When
times are quiet, certainly, demand pleasure--but when they
are not TAKE THE PRICE.

No it was HIS reference. All I said was that the "insider
trades" were non-discretionary, not in any way notable.

I just don't know. I wish I had been in there today but I
have quit trading on Friday's, four days is all the juice
I've got left. I ran the numbers and they shocked so I'm
on a four day week. All I can say is that GTCB is a very
different play since 11/3. That day changed everything.
My MO is noise, but if you want to trade that you want
a little faith OK a LOT of faith, that the issue isn't
going to become worthless. Corn and cotton will NEVER
become worthless, but any common stock might. There is
an outfit that sells gum, starts with "W", I think they
have gone bankrupt THREE TIMES. It could happen to GE,
we have seen abrupt change in values, there is NO PLACE
that is "safe".

So is that helpful, of course not, but I'm flattered
that you asked my opinion. Now here is something else
I had typed, a fellow mentioned cutting grass as a hedge,
got me a little excited:
_____________________________
Actually goats do have some serious heat in that realm.
There is a plant called "kudzu", a vining legume that
kills trees. It is an Asian invader that is working
serious environmental mischief in the American southeast,
and goats seem to be the only thing that can stop it.

I'm not sure I want it stopped, the bio guys teach the
vital importance of biodiversity but I have trouble keeping
up with them (and filtering out the politics). Truth told
I want to plant some but my wife goes ballistic when I
ask permission ("Kentucky Woman").

My neighor Scott got a couple billies for weed control,
they have devastated his property. Goats are heavy hitters.