Candel Therapeutics Inc (CADL)

[rosemountbomber]

No question PBM is a heavyweight in small biotech investing. And of course as you mention Paul Manning who leads them is on the board at Candel and just sank a bunch of money into buying shares personally it seems.

For those who are not that familiar with CADL, this short talk with CEO Tak is a good primer:

If I had to pick a couple of things that were the least positive in that talk, I would say these would be it:
1) Around 5:40 mark, Tak talking about some clinical trial results are coming in the next qtr and "if several of these are positive".... - tough enough to have one study meet endpoints, so hoping for several positive results adds just a bit more anxiety to this. But hopefully past data dictates hope might be justified.
2) Although Tak mentions the path forward will probably involved BP in the form of partnerships, he seems to leave the U.S. market for CADL alone and talks about turning the company into a small Pharma. Although he worked for GSK and recognizes how BP has a much greater ability to drive sales, his mentioning of keeping the US for himself sends up red flags for me about GIA. I have seen that happen to so many small bios. Egos eventually doom the path forward.

Will be watching this closely.