Hey Greens and Bull and all other friends on here. Btw Greens I agree we are headed for good things and there are a lot of catalysts approaching. I am at my day job and sitting on a computer so I am going to type a bit, apologies for a novel here.
A few things to clarify. They have stated that they may release 5211 data when they have it, or they may include it in their abstract for the conference in Sept. I really don't know the rules regarding how long they can wait to release good news, so I am not speaking to that. What I will say is this... if they choose to release at the Sept conference, they must submit their Abstract to the conference by the "Due date for abstract submissions" for that applicable conference. I really feel that there is no way they can send the committee the summary of all their new data (even if it's not all the specific slides and stuff), and not submit it to everyone. They can simply provide an abstract that says what we already know about topline, and put out a PR that they will provide additional at the conference. If the rest of the secondaries are good, at least a tidbit from them would end up in the abstract. So my gut feeling is, that we hear about results on or before the Due date for abstract submissions to that conference. Although it may not work out that way, it's a more likely scenario. Usually it reads like "Viking to submit this new data at this upcoming conference"... it provides a level playing field. Otherwise, if these conference big wigs are given absolutely any tiny piece of new info, they could technically insider trade off it. Hope that makes sense.
OK... as we have shared a long ride, I wanted to share one additional thing with you guys. And I wanted to preface that I am not a pumper of other stocks, so obviously do your own DD. But I thought I could share this and also teach a bit about our approach to NASH in the interim, and possibly make you guys some money if the universe allows it.
So I have been heavily researching NASH lately. Mostly because I got into Viking for 5211, and it is much closer to my areas of expertise than NASH. I will tell you openly and honestly that I am not a NASH investor in general, but am slightly becoming one. NASH is not a single disease entity. A lot of things cause it. NASH standing for "non-alcoholic steatohepatitis" - steato being a root word for "Fat." So really it's just a really fatty liver, and there is 'hepatitis' going on... which simply means that the liver is irritated. So it's a big fatty inflamed liver. A lot of genetic conditions can cause a large buildup of fat in the liver (that's where our orphan indications come in). Also, people have really crappy western diets that are high in fat and get naturally large accumulations of fat in the liver. Well anyways, maybe all this fat is irritating or disrupts the normal synthetic functions of the liver or maybe a co-occurring process with the fat buildup is so irritating... that's where my knowledge stalls a bit, but I get the concept.
Anyways, our play at NASH and MDGL's are basically identical approaches to NASH. Using a synthetic version of one of the breakdown products in the thyroid cascade, to activate the liver to breakdown fat. These drugs work by triggering the breakdown of all the fat that has accumulated. Once the fat burden decreases, we see the liver inflammation decreasing. It's also why dietary models of nash will assumedly (still an assumption and not a proven fact) will respond well to our drug. Obviously our drug and MDGL's are slightly different and will work in slightly different ways, I could speak much more on that, but the jury is out and it will all come out eventually anyways. And I will tell you that many other NASH plays are trying to do the same thing, reducing fat.
So anyways, I found a new stock a little while back. I will tell you a bit about it, and why you could consider diversifying your nash portfolio a bit. Clearly you guys have probably done a bit of NASH research on your own by now, so I don't mind telling you about this, knowing that you have probably already done some NASH legwork.
The stock is IMRN. I found them because they have warrants (go figure, me, warrants?@!). Their warrants are IMRNW. I hold 20% IMRN, 80% IMRNW.
I originally bought Immuron because of their other drugs, not their NASH play. They happened to have recently had a big success in a phase 2 NASH trial though, and most people have no idea about it. It's kind of like VKTX was last year, and to an extent still is, very much under the radar.
IMRN is involved in monoclonal antibodies. A fancy word for saying that they chemically manufacture antibodies to stuff that the body generally doesn't know to make antibodies to, or doesn't make enough antibodies to. The body's immune system figures out something is bad and to remove it in several ways, one of them being if antibodies the body makes binds to it. Once the antibody binds to the substance, the immune cells can attack and remove or break down etc. Check out the concept, worth a look. It's one of the ways that cancer treatment is progressing actually, but cancer is a mess because there isn't usually a standard target to look for, cancer creates mutants of all sorts.
Anyways, they created monoclonal antibodies to C. Diff (bad diarrhea infection, really affects certain populations). Anyways, I really like the concept and their data has thus far looked great. It could still be a big failure in later stage stuff, buyer beware, etc, but right now, it's looking good.
So here's the tie-in. Their NASH drug is a monoclonal antibody. They claim that, just like their C Diff monoclonal antibody, you take the pills, and the antibodies stay in your GI tract, they aren't absorbed. Their monoclonal antibody binds to one of the intermediary products that they think is involved in the NASH inflammation cascade. If you don't understand this concept, look up the inflammatory cascades targeted by Tylenol ;) Same concept, but for liver stuff.
So they found in their *Early Phase 2 trial, that the monoclonal antibody binds to this inflammatory compound that is found in high levels in people struggling with NASH, and allows it to get targeted and removed. For whatever reason, this NASH inflammation target is found in the gut, and hence their drug can get to it (because they claim their drug otherwise doesn't leave the GI tract). Anyways, so it binds to it and allows it to get removed. And once that happens, they have shown that liver function tests (LFT's) go Down, and other NASH inflammatory markers go Down.
So this is a totally different NASH play. Our play is to reduce all the fat so the inflammation goes down. Theirs is like a Tylenol pill for your liver. It does Nothing to the amount of liver fat... but it decreases LFT's and inflammatory markers in NASH, potentially by targeting that intermediary that is found in the gut. What it means though, is that their drug could be used with ANY other drug that would treat NASH potentially, synergistically... that their drug could be like a liver protective drug, to reduce liver inflammation. Keep in mind, it wouldn't fix NASH all on it's own probably, you would need a drug like ours. It also means that IMRN's drug might help people that have liver inflammation going on for like a million other reasons, like viral hepatitis, alcoholic hepatitis, etc.
So here's why I like IMRN. They have no market cap (partially because they are an Australian company and early phase). They offer warrants that are FAIRLY valued currently that allow you to risk less overall and see huge reward, just like us with VKTXW. They have TWO separate Phase 2 trials that are funded by the NIH... both of which are due to report results in the next year. First one is Q4 for adults I believe with alcoholic hepatitis. Second one is ? Q1 for Pediatric patients with some form of liver stuff. I haven't seen too many pediatric studies out there for NASH. This says a lot to me. Not only that, but they currently, (*just like us) have not found any SAE's or known significant side effects... because their drug otherwise doesn't enter the body, so they claim as the reason.
I entered a small position and am excited by this. More than that, I feel that they are likely to partner for their NASH drug or enter the next phase of C Diff progression Well Before their free NIH trials are due in Q4. So I think that you may never need to hold this thing until Q1'18 with the pediatric stuff, and that there are a bunch of catalysts possible well before that. Their cap is like $50 mil. If they decide to partner (which they may do, they passed on doing a big offering recently after news and did a 5 mil offering to ? buy time)- partnering could get them to a $100-150 mil market cap imho. IMRN trading around 3-4.00. Current price of IMRN 12.00. IMRNW exercise price is 10.00. If you do the math, you will see that if they go to a measly $100 mil cap, you could make almost 300% on IMRNW.
Again, super speculative, but not many NASH players out their with such low caps. Consider a tiny position in IMRNW if you have any cash to spare. It goes without saying, but if VKTX does as well as I feel it may do coming up, you guys may never hear from me again lol. So while I toil away here at my day job, I figured I would share a little with you guys. VKTX has treated me well, but I am going for the big score. Maybe I'm wrong, but VKTX still feels right.
VKTX remains insanely undervalued and I feel that the rest of this year will hopefully hold wonderful things for us.
Good luck friends,
Waffles
