Thank you everyone for the encouraging notes.
The following is from the 2023 goals section of today's press release:
expansion of the operation in Sawston following completion of the Phase 1B buildout;
continued development of the Flaskworks system, including choice of the system version to take forward;
I read this as a statement that Flaskworks is still under development and thus it is likely not part of the commercial manufacturing application under consideration. While some will no doubt be disappointed, we could take comfort in knowing that the company is taking what I would think is a more incremental approach, basically taking the same manufacturing process that passed the "specials" hurdle over the higher commercial hurdle. Presumably, this will lead to a higher probability of success.
For insight on the cost of manufacturing I think it's safe to assume that Advent has enough staff in place to support the previously announced capacity of 500 patients/year. This is very rough but that works out to about 1 employee/month per patient. Of course, probably most of those employees are "fixed" (leadership/support functions) and only a portion would be "variable" which would mean the labor cost per patient is possibly substantially lower than the 1:1 ratio would imply.
A final note regarding my assertion that $.70 is a great buying opportunity for NWBO is to take into account the meltdown in the larger biotech sector, especially small companies. XBI, an often quoted biotech ETF was down 26% in 2021 and over 40% from the ~February 1st peak. Also, a newsletter I read reported that its recommended portfolio of small biotech stocks was down over 40% last year. These headwinds impact all companies even though biotechs have their own unique milestones.
I lied. Here's another note. I was asked about BioNTech's news. I know very little about their program beyond what I've read on this board but we do know any approved treatment will take years to commercialize and of course it may not (probably is not from what I've read) be as effective as DCVax-L. All this aside, we should welcome big pharma companies promoting immunotherapy. Remember how big CAR-T was a few years ago and how Kite and Juno were such big news and both were bought out in a big pharma feeding frenzy? Maybe it'll happen again. This time NWBO would be the belle of the ball. The only difference would be the numbers would likely be bigger this time.
AI
