The relationship between Advent Bio - a private company owned by Mrs Powers and Northwest Bio - a public company with Mrs Powers as the CEO sits uncomfortably with many shareholders. Especially as Northwest funds were used to acquire the site and essentially build the manufacturing facilities. The lease is in the name of Northwest Bio. Notwithstanding the need to keep commercial contracts secret can you explain to shareholders why it serves our best interests to have Advent Bio independently market themselves from their website as follows -
“Advent Bioservices began activity as a cell therapy contract development & manufacturing organisation (CDMO) in 2016. We are currently currently managing the development of a state-of-the-art facility for multiproduct GMP production outside Sawston in Cambridgeshire, which will allow scale up of current commercial production and initiate the provision of contract manufacturing services to meet the growing demand for such services in the UK.
The Sawston facility is located just 7 miles outside Cambridge city centre with excellent transport links to Central London, London Stansted airport and it is 4 miles from the M11 motorway, linking to the Midlands by the new A14 extension.
The facility consists of GMP lab space and process development and additional areas for future expansion. Initial construction work has focused on the building of 2 separate GMP suites with grade B/C classified areas, in house QC testing and office space as well as a multipurpose cryogenic storage unit.
We will operate the facility under a comprehensive IT infrastructure including eQMS and an eBMR, with a LIMS with secure storage for client documents and paperless systems. Clients Operations within these suites will benefit from already validated cleanrooms, in-house environmental monitoring system as well as training, ancillary services and technical support inclusive of process development and validation. The cryogenic facilities are available to external clients as off-site storage and offer disaster recovery services as per UK regulatory (HTA) requirements.”
There is what appears to shareholders a potentially obvious conflict of interest between our CEO and a private company she owns and it’s relationship with Northwest Bio and the facilities they own. My question is -
What good reason is there why Advent Bio is not a full 100% subsidiary of Northwest Bio? Why is it in our best interests to have our CEO independently own it ?
The following is the question I'd like to see asked,
"We've heard that you anticipate the time to releasing top line after data lock to be some time between two weeks and two months. Can you give us some color as to what that entire process entails that could cause the time frame to take up to two months?"
Can Linda Powers confirm that the Autolomous employees (https://www.autolomous.com/) have been working with Northwest Biotherapeutics on developing & deploying their AutoloMATE eBMR solution (Phase 1) and that the Autolomous team are NOW busy working remotely, building Proof-of-concepts with Northwest Biotherapeutics and developing the next stages (Phase 2 and Phase 3) of their AutoloMATE platform?
Q2
At the beginning of the year, important information about the future of Northwest Biotherapeutics in the UK was available on the following website: https://www.mill-lane-sawston.co.uk/.
Was Northwest Biotherapeutics one of the initiators for the construction of this website and why is the information currently not available? (Note: IMO only a minority of the NWBO ihub followers saved the information on their hard drive.)
Q3 (Less important)
On March 16 there is a new ‘Handelsregister–Bekanntmachung‘ ( Commercial Register Announcement ?) of Northwest Biotherapeutics GmbH. Can Linda Powers give us an update of what is going on in Germany (the German subsidiary NW Bio GmbH)? Is Fanny Schömann still the German representative and what is her relationship with Advent bioservices? (If any, but IMO there is evidence of that relationship)
Q4 (Less important, only question out of personal curiosity)