Listened to and talked with Dr. Rubinfeld today. This is an update and first hand account form one of the shareholders of AMBS and was posted on the AMBS board from the shareholders meeting today.
Posted By: barcode27
Update from ASM Meeting:
I arrived at the Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich, and Rosati offices around 9:15 AM (saw Gerald going in the door up ahead of me). After navigating the construction zone in the lobby, I arrived on the 33rd floor and checked in with the receptionist. I could see Gerald, John, Marc Faerber, and a few others through the glass windows of a conference room directly ahead. All shareholders were being directed to wait in a room down the hall until the meeting began. It was a nice opportunity to visit with other shareholders. Robert Harris stuck his head in the door and thanked us all for coming at some point in there.
Just before 10 AM, Gerald came to our room and invited us to join him the main conference room. We all made informal introductions to the company personnel before the meeting began. Amarantus attendees were:
Gerald Commissiong
John Commissiong
Bob Farrell
Robert Harris
Marc Faerber
Joe Rubinfeld (was excited to see him there!)
Don Huffman
David Lowe
I counted 10 shareholders in attendance, including myself (may be off by one or two since we were all sitting along one side of a long table).
There was also an attendee from Marcum (didn't catch his name), and a representative of VStock Transfer was on the phone.
Gerald opened the meeting by reading from a pre-planned script regarding ground rules, participant roles, and the issues at hand which would be voted on. Bob Farrell took over and also read some of the scripted opening.
Gerald then walked through each item for vote with a brief explanation and paused to see if there were any formal questions regarding any of the issues. Hearing none, he stepped through this portion fairly quickly. Ballots were then distributed in the room to people who indicated they hadn't voted already.
Highlights from the voting portion:
As of today, there are 753.984M shares outstanding, and 748M of those shares were represented either in person or by proxy for this vote. All items passed according to the recommendations of the board (no surprise there). Gerald left the room to fax the in-person ballots to VStock, but I felt this was largely a symbolic move since he had already announced that each item had passed.
After the official meeting, Gerald said they everyone could stick around for informal discussion and mingling. Not a single person left the room, and I was very impressed at how attentive and engaged everyone from the company was. I especially noted Don Huffman and Robert Harris taking detailed notes on shareholder questions, concerns.
Shareholder question portion:
IMO, the most unfortunate/uncomfortable part of the meeting began when the first shareholder took the floor. If he posts on here, I'm sorry, but I doubt he does since he made it a point to say that he doesn't own a computer, cell phone, iPad, etc. He offered support for the company and said he was proud to be a shareholder, then began rambling for what seemed like forever suggesting that the company should pay 12-18 year old kids to do research projects. I couldn't really follow what he was saying, but most of it was nonsensical. He kept saying stuff like "Gerald, you don't have any experience and don't really know the biotech lingo, but your father does." He was pretty rude to Gerald and I thought it was way out of line. I won't go into more detail here, but needless to say I was glad when he yielded the floor.
Next came excellent questions on LymPro, specifically centered on the ICON deal. Gerald couldn't say too much, but I did note that he expects the arrangement with ICON to expand in scope in the future after the next set of results are released. Everyone in the room perked up when Joe Rubinfeld spoke up for the first time, emphasizing that we're ready to launch a diagnostic in 4 months... "we're there!"
I asked a question related to GDNF and MANF, specifically on how the ongoing GDNF trials in the UK might be able to provide some lift to the MANF PD effort. I noted the the amount of scientific literature published to date on GDNF seems to be 10 to 1 vs. MANF and asked if the company saw any reason for that. A good discussion then resulted with input from David Lowe and John Commissiong. John essentially said that "GDNF is an old drug" and that he fully expects a new flood of MANF research and published material over the next 2-3 as interest in neurotrophic factors has been resurrected after a sleepy decade. I asked David Lowe directly if he thought that in 10-15 years there would be a fragmented market between neurotrophic factors like GDNF, CDNF, MANF, etc, and he was emphatic that he thought MANF would become the leader eventually.
Other random notes from the question portion:
- Gerald mentioned a pre-IND meeting regarding MANF with the FDA in a "couple of days." Disclaimer: I may not have heard him right (maybe he meant a couple of weeks/months), but it's sitting right here in my notes and my ears perked up in the meeting when he said this. He then went on to discuss a fairly critical 60-120 day period when the company will have a back-and-forth dialogue with the FDA regarding their IND submission.
- Eltoprazine first patient dosing is possible this year, but to be conservative the company is targeting early 2015. Gerald mentioned again that Eltoprazine has already been in 700 patients, strong safety profile, etc.
- JC was asked if he liked the setup at QB3, if he had what he needed, etc. He said it was a good arrangement, and started to mention upcoming collaboration with different university teams. Gerald quickly stepped in and stopped him, saying that they weren't allowed to talk about that yet. Everyone had a good chuckle at that. He had some follow-on questions regarding PhenoGuard, and made note of the fact that not everyone can do this type of work (mentioned that you not only have to keep the neurons alive, but also keep them "connected". I don't know enought about the science to comment more on that, just reporting what he stated.
- There are no formal ties to Cerora, just that they like the company and have a strong belief in the founder's integrity (guessing this was referring to Adam Simon)
After the Q&A session everyone hung around for another half hour or so and talked one-on-one. I got to speak with Don Huffman and David Lowe extensively during this time, and also talked with Joe Rubinfeld briefly. Folks, these guys are dedicated to what they're doing and I was honored to be in the room talking with them. I was very impressed with the entire session and feel more strongly than ever that the company has assembled the right team at the right time and is poised to do Earth-shattering things.
