NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[Evaluate]

"We continue to be very interested in the technology of this company. Even last week the company made a very strange announcement, which in a way characterised the odd situation we have with this business, which is on the one hand the science looks very compelling: it’s an amin-oncology approach to fighting cancer, focussed on dendritic cells. I’m not going to go into the detail but suffice to say that is the approach.

It is an approach which we have audited independently across our network and the reports coming back from our network are that the science is very credible and that there is a lot of interest in this technology and in this approach. And that was reinforced last week when the company announced that it had entered into combination studies with three leading amin-oncology companies, which we think are three of the world’s leading pharma companies.

So on the one hand you’ve got there a piece of, sort of, therapeutic endorsement from some very intelligent, very big organisations, whose focus is in the whole area of amin-oncology, which appear to want to undertake trials (which they’re probably going to have to fund) with Northwest Biotechnology. But at the same time, in the same announcement, what you saw was a sort of list of the issues that the company has had to confess to,: which are shortcomings in governance, shortcomings in reporting, shortcomings in auditing; the relationship between the company and its manufacturing business.

All of those issues touch on issues we have raised with the business. So, yes, I think the answer is it was a schoolboy error in that I underestimated the ability of those governance issues to over-rule and undermine the fundamental technology, which we remain very interested in. And indeed we appear not to be alone in being very interested in the technology.

The company’s share price: I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the share price. The share price at $12 a share was probably very wrong; at $1 a share it’s probably very wrong equally. But it’s very hard to make an informed judgement at the moment.

There is a bit of a shutdown in terms of information emanating from this company. But sooner or later they’re going to have to come and talk to us: talk to us about what’s going on in the business. And of course we are waiting for the reports that we wanted to see, albeit that we weren’t successful in achieving what we wanted to achieve via the method that we chose. Nevertheless what happened was that the company did appoint an independent committee to investigate the issues that we wanted to be addressed.

That committee is yet to report, so we’re waiting for that report to come out. Once we have that report then I think we can move forward with the business. But we obviously can’t do anything until we have that information.”

Interesting.
I think Woodford is jumping to the conclusion that some others have made too, in regards to the recent vaguely worded PR .... I am not yet convinced that the combo studies will involve any leading pharma companies ... the PR just mentioned 3 groups. Interesting to see that Woodford believes that these other pharma companies are probably going to have to fund the combo trials ... we'll see.

Interesting that Woodford said Northwest Biotechnology instead of Northwest Biotherapeutics ... at least if the statements were verbatim.

I wonder exactly which reports that Woodford is waiting on that they wanted to see ....?

Interestingly worded .... "albeit that we weren’t successful in achieving what we wanted to achieve via the method that we chose" .... so what exactly was Woodford trying to achieve, and via which method? Is is "just" that he was trying to get more info about the "governance" related issues, and perhaps the above "reports that they are still waiting on" .... and was the method of trying to insist on having the folks that Woodford suggested perform the investigation?