NanoViricides Inc (NNVC)

[KMBJN]

There are process chemists with decades of experience in the pharma industry in scaling up difficult schemes.

How many of those know how to scale up amphiphilic self-assembling polymeric nanomicelles of uniform 20 nm diameter, with attachment points for ligands?

The cost in hiring such experts as full time employees

The PhD experts working on the problem are not NNVC employees. They work for Theracour. It's just like NNVC hired Theracour to do the work you are saying that NNVC should hire someone to do.

spending the millions to install the infrastructure to support that capability in-house doesn't make sense for any startup pharma.

That's why NNVC didn't hire them. They are paying Theracour to complete the project.

Characterizing metabolites is done as part of the ADME work done by the same GLP certified labs doing the IND enabling studies.

Once again, how many have experience in characterizing metabolites of a never before created nanomedicine? I'm guessing almost none.

it makes no sense for a startup to spend the millions for setting up that capability in house.

Glad that you agree with NNVC's strategy of not having these people in house. The work is contracted out to Theracour.

If NNVC has a single lead candidate as Seymour claims, there is no conceivable in-house work that could be done to further its development

That is nonsense. NNVC hired a virologist to screen all the drug candidates in vitro, and possibly in vivo. It's important work that saves on drug development time by not contracting that work out and waiting for results. It can be run on NNVC's schedule.

Can't have it both ways - criticizing the outside lab testing then saying that "there is no conceivable in-house work that could be done." It is better to have an in-house virologist do the majority of the screening, then have outside experts validate and further the findings in different models. Similarly, it is better that NNVC hire out the scale-up and metabolite characterization work to Theracour. NNVC has a decent strategy to conserve funds. Hopefully, Theracour and the outside labs will come through, and NNVC will be in clinical testing before too long.