Geron Corp (GERN)

[Juice Newton]

I'm sorry but I can't take any of that seriously. There were no buyout talks. The best we could have hoped for was continuation of the collaboration and the start of two phase 3 trials and maybe expansion of the program into combo trials. Instead they decided it wasn't worth it and discontinued the collaboration entirely. It's as simple as that.

I'm just saying that it's difficult for me to believe that they made this decision some time in the week between the 13th, when they told everyone that imetelstat was still one of their prospective drugs, and the 26th, when they told Geron the news. Maybe I'm wrong in saying that it was deception on their part and it's all just badly handled PR, but there was too much money involved for me to totally believe that there was no deception whatsoever.