Replies to post #1514 on Benitec Biopharma Ltd (BNTC)

[Blane]

Unless I see more, Dirks tweet seems to be misleading. It doesn't necessarily say they are necessarily "switching" as much as investigating a different method as well. The abstract says that the short interfering RNAi has difficulty without a delivery vehicle, which benitec's whole therapeutic platform is based on. Unless the article itself says more, which for some reason I can get the full article to open, it seems to be a very misleading tweet.

[Blane]

Hoyland's reply on Hotcopper regarding Dirks tweet about sums it up. :


Hi Derek,

I think this tweet of Dirk's just about sums up his level understanding of Benitec right now, which seems to be as limited as the ordinary man-in-the-street i.e., not that of an impartial, specialist commentator.

One would think from his evocative language (collaborator switches) that the UNSW had abandoned ship and jumped on-board the sirna/synthetic delivery boat. The truth is that the UNSW was researching this approach as a possible treatment for NSCLC BEFORE it partnered with Benitec on Tribetarna. This new paper is, therefore, simply a continuance of that earlier work. In fact, the UNSW is pursuing both avenues (sirna and ddRNAi) of research into NSCLC but it has not "switched" away from ddRNAi as Dirk implies. Furthermore, Tribetarna currently uses JetPEI as its delivery vector and that is a synthetic polymer, so what is his point?

At best, this tweet just shows how little attention Dirk pays to Benitec. At worst, he is being deliberately mischievous. Where Benitec is concerned, I just don't treat Dirk seriously any more.