NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

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I think Feuerstein's comments match up well with this Liau interview. The dates are right too. LL seems to have already told us two years ago the Plll didn't work out. We know LL moved on and, interestingly enough, we know LL was willing to speak with AF. That says something in itself! Adam, please let us know how that conversation went, if it did.



>>But the problem there is the autologous dendritic cells are hard to get patented. You could patent it, but it’s hard to defend that because it’s really the patient’s own tumor, right?

So, the patents really are process patents and we could file one that tweaks things a little bit, and that’s essentially that’s what Northwest Bio did. They filed multiple patents just on little tweaks of the cocktails that are used to make the cells.

The other drugs are already made by other companies and they’re just an agreement. How do you patent something that is actually part of a patient rather than just patenting the process? And that’s why people have gone on to patent just individual targets. We could do that, but I wouldn’t invest millions of dollars on a clinical trial to do a trial of a vaccine for an individual target. I just don’t think it can work. So, I think the conflict is you could patent some—you could say, “Oh, I discovered this one protein that we can make a vaccine to and we could license it.” But my gut feeling is that is not going to be what will cure GBM. In a way, what I think will cure GBM is unpatentable. So that’s the dilemma. Does that make sense?

It’s been successful in other areas. A lot of my colleagues here have done very well with prostate cancer drugs and breast cancer drugs. But so far glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer are both very formidable, and we haven’t gotten there with these small biotechs or Big Pharma companies coming to us and saying, “What do you have?”

>>And we give it. We either license it out or start your own little startup. Here at Stanford, it’s a very start-up environment. It depends on your goals. If your goal is to have a startup and then have a pharmaceutical company buy you out or get an IPO, you could do that. We could do the same thing Northwest Bio, Tocagen, Selbach, or any of these companies that have already done trials do.

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really cure GBM unless there’s something a little bit broader. I guess in my heart of hearts, I think what’s going to cure the disease is going to be personalized. It’s going to be something that comes from the person or the tumor itself and I’m not sure how that can be patented other than the idea and the process by which that’s done.

>>Because I think with all these little trials that we’ve done over the years, there are some people that responded, but the majority of the patients don’t. Then the trial fails, and we really don’t learn anything about it. It just needs to be a process involving finding mathematicians or bioinformaticists who are skilled in terms of how you deal with a problem where you have moving parts in four dimensions.

https://billmalloy.info/qa-with-linda-liau/amp/