Actually, it's an example of a couple of things:
1) Sloppy thinking, which may be expected at a cocktail party. Sounds like they confused Ampakines and ketamine.
2) Premature closure based on #1. I just encountered a different example of this at a professional meeting a few days ago, where I spoke to someone with whom I have a good relationship. I had approached him and his company a few months ago, because their interests--I thought--were potentially, albeit obliquely, congruent with the Ampakines, and I had sent him a writeup for their BD&L group to review. I had heard back fairly quickly that they wouldn't look into it any further. He told me at this meeting that there was one inhouse scientist who had blocked consideration of a licensing. It was clear from the conversation that this scientist's negative view was based on some vague recollection of the CX717 toxicity flap. But when I said that the scientist's information was outdated and inaccurate, my friend told me that it didn't matter; there was a wall, and no one at the company is sufficiently motivated to try to overcome it. They have path of less resistance they can pursue.
Is this a 'marketing' problem? Not really. Cortex has spent four or more years trying to establish a different narrative for Ampakines, but with limited success--some people maintain a cognitive set based on the old information. With the thousands of licensing opportunities out there, people take a shortcut to parse the universe of possibilities down to a more manageable number. If Cortex had the capital to generate several tranches of new clinical data, that could start to undo the old perception, but they haven't had that option. It's akin to the problem the American auto industry had for so long, where even after they had started to turn around the design and quality issues that had led many to see them as second-rate compared to Japanese/German cars, they had to demonstrate (not just claim) improvement for a few years before they could substantially shift that perception.
So Cortex is stuck: They need to get data to change the perception, and they need to change the perception in order to fund the trials that would produce that data.
NP
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