Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[apostrophe]

re: latest grant news $1.4 M NIH, BU & Harvard

So,was feeling a little slighted at our guys, Anavex, being passed over. Took a look at Klogene Therapeutics, recipient of latest AD grant from NIH Boston University. The website is a little weird in that one must click on the little square at the top right on to get to the orher web pages.

From original news release:

“This is a major milestone for our research. My laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine has studied the Klotho gene [...] since 2003,” said Dr. Carmela Abraham, Professor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology at Boston University School of Medicine and co-founder of Klogene Therapeutics, Inc. “We are pleased that our pioneering work has been endorsed by a generous NIH grant [...] “I dedicated the last 36 years of my career to Alzheimer’s disease research and I do not intend to stop until we have a treatment or a cure. I am more optimistic than ever that we will succeed,” said Dr. Abraham.

No mention of ipo or stock at this point. It's a private startup. Actually $1.4M isn't a huge amount as major grants go. Enough to pay a few researchers comfortably to keep going for a few years at least. The main researcher is co-founder of the company, maybe even gets a nice corner office. The colleges can now basically divest themselves from this particular project. Now it's up to Klogene to succeed (or fail), not the college, along with any impact on prestige. Evidently, they haven't quite succeeded yet. Maybe they'll announce a sudden breakthrough 100% cure tomorrow. OTOH, another way to read it is that they don't have a cure, or even a treatment, even though they've been at it a while.

Maybe, there is some awareness that maybe somebody out there does have something that works (wonder who that could be) and this is a nice way to take care of their own, out to pasture before the general word is out (e.g. confirming data) after which it could be awkward to just pull the plug.

At some point, actual success against AD could be a little rough on a lot of people who have been making their careers in perpetual AD research. We've heard the term "Cancer Inc." So far, AD has been basically in the incurable category as well. Lot's of people have been working on it, some, as here, for as long as 33 years.

Sorry, I'd rather see meaningful help for AD sufferers come to commercialization, even though it might mean some others in the field might be out of a job for a while, though I can sympathize.

Well, as a result of some rumination and reflection,that's my take on it. Don't feel so bad about the grant at the moment.

http://www.klogene.com/