Something happened between 2007 and the present, something outside management's control. First pharmaceuticals took a hit and what had been open season acquisition going into 2007 turned into a vacuum of deals by 2009. Funding and funds available dried up. No one funded anything for a year straight. When funding began to trickle in again it went to the politically and economically well-connected. Almost no progress was seen in the biopharma sector for 18 months from 2008 to mid-2009.
Something that management did have control over, but were a bit green and naive, was funding arrangements and the prospect of a partnership. In 2007, NNVC requested a $5 million defense bill earmark but was authorized $2 million in the final version passed by both the house and the senate. In a separate funding bill from the house, the bill that actually distributes budget items, in transposing the earmark's budget identification number, a zero was dropped from the item release, a number that must match exactly as the authorization is an act of law. The budget item $2 million could not be released. There were more in the series of unfortunate events, but to me these two alone account for almost 3 years of delay from the original projection.
So, there is much more to this story than a product pipeline, there are the politics, the industrial intrigue, the threat to current therapies from disruptive technology, among other things.