"Then, Ariad is a much simpler, higher valuation as a primarily lung cancer biotech with a very promising drug coming on market, going 1st line, with a solid pipeline behind it."
This seems so obvious to me. It begs the question... is Denner just dumb (doubtful) or is there some conflict of interest here regarding the performance of his fund?
The problem is ponatinib is not going to extract much value either way at the moment, see how much INCY paid for EU operation and rights where CML market size isn't much different from US. Obviously INCY was more interested in EU operation rather than ponatinib, otherwise they would have agreed to pay much higher portion of OPTIC-2L trial expense because it is a completely outside of US trial.