RespireRx Pharmaceuticals Inc (fka RSPI)

[enemem]

>>> Big Pharma has recognized that it makes economic sense to offload some of the cost of research failures to bagholder biotech investors, who have a nearly unlimited appetite for chasing the promise of newfangled technologies.

Short-term sense at best. Microcap biotech is not a viable business model, irrespective of the science, because it cannot secure operating capital. Why would a VC or anybody else assume risks that cash-rich, well-informed BPs are unwilling to? Unless BP's strategic choice to off-load R&D costs is matched by a shift towards funding earlier stage compounds, BPs will be able to harvest one last round of late-stage compounds from existing microcaps, and then that's that. My sense is that the current conventional wisdom dooms all microcaps with early-stage compounds, regardless of how promising they are, because the costs associated with bringing a molecule to the point where it can be outlicenced is prohibitive.

Irrespective of how inept corx's management is (that's a topic that really doesn't interest me any more), the value of corx's IP is self-evident. If this company goes under, the outlook for biotech as a whole is bleak. The combination of short-term biotech thinking, and a disfunctional regulatory environment dooms one of the few economic sectors in which the US could still be competitive.