Biotech Values

[iwfal]

MNTA

FWIW I think MNTA has a fair shot at overturning the 2015 patent, but very little chance of the 2014s

From my brief reading I'd concur. But only if the legal team stops trying to solve world hunger and focus on what is important. The naïveté is damaging because focus is lost. (Lawyers and accountants will happily spend your money tilting at windmills - it is up to the customer to manage their focus.)

CWs confidence in that was a bit strange, especially when they still haven't been approved.

My characterization of Momenta is that it is a bunch of very smart, straight shooting, but naive, academics. Both of my disturbing quotes are of this vein. But even more of this vein is the strange, and potentially suicidal, focus on nothing but substitutible generics (the cool reverse engineering) even when other large and orthogonally-risky opportunities arise and they pursue them lackadaisically at best. E.g. Right now much of their substitutible business model is hanging on one legal thread (I.e. if the recent ruling on safe harbor gets upheld it kills >50% of their NPV.). In their reverse engineering of successful drugs they are undoubtedly finding out VERY important factoids that would allow them to design high likelihood successful NME drugs - and the risk in that development would be largely independent (I.e. orthogonal in math-speak) of their risky generics strategy. Yet it gets very slow rolled as they focus on the cool problem.