The "transaction" involving Huawei appears to be perplexing especially when one considers that this was a sweet heart deal for reasons that are not apparent at first blush.
Allow me to speculate. This may be off the wall, but please indulge me.
Who is Huawei? It is a private and huge ICT company with a dominant market position in China. In summary, it is the SoftBank, Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia, ATT, Verizon, etc. of China. It is a telecoms enabler and device provider. It sells more smartphones than Apple and it is not even in the US market. Very few have ever heard of Huawei even though it has a leading advantage and dominance in 5G technology. Its annual revenues are close to $100 billion and it employs about 180,000 world wide. It sells personal computers, network switching devices, peripheral networking devices, security/surveilliance systems, software development, AI, etc. It is a fully integrated ICT company. It does have a connection into the medical/healthcare/science arena as it develops and provides specific integrative AI and networking applications for these sectors. Its connection into bio-tech is through the development of gene sequencing/testing applications. Just like a number of large ICT companies such as Samsung, Huawei is looking to branch out and enter/dominate huge and strategic world markets even though they may not be directly in its current orbit of business.
The US (Trump administration) government considers Huawei a threat due to its 5G dominance and security expertise and that as a large well funded company, the Chinese government may have engaged it in espionage activities. Of course, the tariff tiff between China and the US may easily have engendered espionage allegations swirling around the company. This could be nothing more than a politically motivated stance.
The connection between NWBO and Huawei may have had its origin in the fact that Huawei's founder's daughter was at least alleged to have had(or have) cancer. It is possible that through research, Huawei stumbled upon NWBO and became intrigued by the science and platform. They may have contacted and spoken at length with Linda Liau and her colleagues at UCLA in order to get a better feel for the science as well as with Dr. Bosch and Dr. Ashkans in the UK. Huawei already has two locations in the Cambridge area for Huawei Research and Technology UK and Huawei Sciences so contact with Dr. Ashkans could have been easily arranged.
The solid tumour market is huge at about $100 billion world-wide. Control and dominance in this market would confer extraordinary leverage for financial and geo-political pay-offs. Imagine the leverage Huawei AND the chinese government would have in dominating at least two major world markets: Solid tumour cancers and the ICT sector including smartphones.
This is where NWBO comes in. And the sweet heart deal worked out by NWBO and Huawei is a win-win transaction for all concerned. For NWBO, the win is obvious. For peanuts(to Huawei considering its financial largesse), Huawei gets to dip its toes in this market with virtually no risk. If the results are successful, Huawei will get to at least partner if not buy out NWBO completely. For Huawei, they could easily make an offer that would be agreeable to NWBO given their financial resources and the backing of the chinese government. If the results signal failure--no big deal. Huawei has property whose value would largely offset what they paid for it in the coming years or use it for their own expansion plans.
And....most importantly, Huawei would use the chinese brain cancer market as its launching pad. It really does not need to depend upon world markets. It could easily obtain chinese regulatory approvals and rapidly penetrate the market which is perhaps larger than all other world markets combined. It could also obtain reg approvals for other solid tumour indications. With its powerful market dominance in China it could outcompete anybody anywhere and hold governments/patients hostage to the Chinese government's purposes. It would have economies of scale no one else could muster. This would be a huge geo-political win for the chinese government and Huawei. The financial implications for NWBO are superlative if this is the true scenario behind the Sawston deal which, at first blush, looks like just a real estate deal. And doing the deal in the UK to raise money and not the US and cloaking the deal as nothing more than a real estate deal to most observers, provides cover for prying government eyes. NWBO may find itself in the catbird seat due to this deal and "force" the US government to"push" a BP or consortium thereof to BO NWBO so as to prevent foreign company/government control. These may be very interesting times if my speculation is even close.
Of course, this imagined scenario would not or should not escape the US government's notice that it may portend a clandestine and infectious advancement and infiltration of Chinese interests. Of course, the US government would probably wake up to this threat upon unblinding or later which is now under the radar screen because results have not been unveiled. Given the fact that the US government might be prone to interfere with a partnership or BO post unblinding, it may be to both NWBO's and Huawei's advantage to seal a deal before unblinding. This could be the reason to let the trial go on a bit longer, to say the 45th month mark, not necessarily for US approvals but to seal a deal with Huawei with their increased confidence as a result BEFORE any public unveiling. In the meantime, terms of agreement details could be negotiated and worked out.
I like the possibilities. JMHO.
