RespireRx Pharmaceuticals Inc (RSPI)

[neuroinv]

The 'chatter' is that there have been, and continue to be, talks with multiple companies. Talks are very tightly wrapped--there's no particular reason for leakage: Cortex doesn't want to taint their prospects by saying anything, and BP BusDev groups are generally in talks/DD with literally dozens of companies at a time--it's what they do, it's all that they do, outlicensing and inlicensing (and generally different groups within a BP handle each of those tasks). As discussions get more serious, the degree of information available decreases, not increases. BP's don't want other companies to know what they are doing, because they fear that could increase the price.

Any tiny Phase IIa--and lots of companies are now doing them--is a kind of anecdotal POC. They almost never get statistical significance, and if they do, it can be an artifact of the measure used (e.g. Targacept's 20pt MCI trial which was surprisingly positive, but the drug failed when AstraZeneca ran a big trial in Alzheimer's, probably because the cognitive test Targacept used has a tendency towards false positives). If you want to be a purist, there is no absolute "proof" until Phase III has been successfully completed. POC is more accurately thought of as--is there a signal that indicates the drug has some effect upon the symptom(s) in question?

NeuroInvestment