Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

TLCV—one of the premiere scams in biotech history—is bankrupt:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idCAN2124091820091221

TLCV was one of the original LASIK service companies and, at one time, it had a thriving network of LASIK centers in the US and Canada.

However, the company founder thought he could make more money by branching into biotech. So TLCV licensed a blood-filtration technology called rheopheresis that was purportedly a treatment for dry age-related macular degeneration.

In Dec 2004, a separate company called OccuLogix was spun off to the public under the Nasdaq ticker RHEO (later changed to OCCX), and enough investors were hoodwinked by the concept to allow TLCV to cash in to some degree (#msg-4777105).

Alas, it was only a matter of time before it became evident that rheopheresis was a hoax. The pivotal trial failed in Feb 2006 (#msg-9544969), but the company continued to hold disingenuous CC’s (#msg-10077109) and issue glowing press releases touting the supposedly stellar clinical data (#msg-10505814).

Meanwhile, in Canada—where it was legal for RHEO to perform the rheopheresis procedure commercially without formal regulatory approval—hardly anyone was getting treated. This was perhaps the best indication that rheopheresis was not what RHEO claimed it to be.

It took until Jun 2006 for RHEO to fess up to the clinical failure (#msg-11542103), and it was not until Nov 2007 that RHEO finally shut down the rheopheresis operation (#msg-24197626).

TLCV (the original parent company) dumped its equity stake in RHEO in May 2007 (#msg-20052283). However, TLCV suffered from the elective nature of LASIK during the recent recession and it simply ran out of cash.

To add insult to injury, TLCV had made heavy use of Tiger Woods as its official spokesperson :- (