Sangamo Biosciences Inc (SGMO)

[ZincFinger]

Shire would NOT "save" $1.5 billion by buying out SGMO despite some misconceptions to that effect on the "other" SGMO board. (Which IMHO is good because I'd really HATE to see a buyout anywhere remotely near current levels!)

The milestones are to be used to finance the development of zinc fingers for the chosen conditions. If Shire bought out SGMO then it would have to do that work itself and so it would just be spending the money directly instead of giving it to SGMO to spend.

Which, frankly, to me, is a very good thing because the LAST thing I'd want to see right now is some big pharma KNOWING it could "save" $1.5 BILLION by acquiring SGMO outright. I plan to get a LOT more than a measly $25 or so for my shares, thanks, and am willing to wait a few years to do it.

Zinc fingers work VERY fast!: KBLB is now using them to make a new GM in EXACTLY the location intended, with EXACTLY the insertion desired with EXACTLY the immediate effect desired (the secondary effects of a GM are, of course, inherently problematic for most changes) in only 2 or 3 months! This is a BLISTERING rate of genetic modifications!

Note that many products will be neither drugs nor foods and thus require no lengthy and expensive clinical trials nor any food safety testing. And some even (like KBLB's silkworms) won't even require any approvals for the release of GMOs into the environment: commercial silkworms are incapable of surviving in the wild). So some products could be paying royalties to SGMO (thru the DAS and SIAL agreements) in relatively short order. That, plus SGMO's 2+ years of cash on hand, plus the SHPGY deal give SGMO the staying power to be around long enough for the other, longer development time products to start paying royalties thru SIAL and DAS and then KBLB's drugs to start bring revenues in.

KBLB's silkworms could be some of the first BIG royalties SGMO gets: there is a huge market for spider silk (both as spun fiber and unspun protein) for a very wide array of uses:

unspun spider silk protein can be altered to biodegrade at any desired rate, it has very valuable optical properties, the fiber is tougher than Kevlar and, uniquely, its properties (like for example, strength and elasticity, that are strongly dependent on each other in all other materials, are independent in silk (thanks to its unique structure) and could be highly customizable to combinations of properties that could not be achieved in other materials.

AND MANY OF THOSE PRODUCTS COULD BE ON THE MARKET WITHIIN SEVERAL YEARS and paying royalties to SGMO(i.e.: before SGMO would run out of cash at its current burn rate even if it received no other income!

There is also an extensive range of potential medical uses (which would, of course, be years down the road: medical sutures, implants, scaffold for growing tissues,

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136811/