Talking about building contacts and profile. Check out this link to Telethon's 'Drug Discovery Unit' page. Scroll down till you find 'key collaborators' (PYC's collaborators). In particular the Singapore connection
Certainly interesting in the light of this post by ds early last year.
Pure spec, but maybe they're gearing up for sale as soon as they get good results from a data pack (assuming they do)?
I think it's worth going back to the company’s strategy as outlined at the 2012 AGM (excerpts from presentation below). They might be lagging on the timeline, but otherwise, have continued to execute their strategy.
Three overlapping strategic phases
- PARTNERING (2012/2013): Short term revenue growth from Pharma fee-for-service alliances
- TECHNOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP (2013/2014): Building capital value by enhancing Phylomer drug discovery platform
- PRODUCTS AND POSITIONING (2014/2015): Positioning Phylogica for trade sale exit by advancing internal programs against high-value targets
The main game: what do the acquirers value most?
- Plan to exit via a trade sale to big pharma company or a specialist pharma/biotech
- No correlation between exit value of companies with proprietary libraries and their revenue -- Almost all of the biologics library companies with high value exits (in hundreds of millions to billions of dollars) have negligible revenue (eg. Avidia, Domantis, Adnexus, Applied Molecular Evolution, Evogenix, Abgenix, Glycofi, Medarex)
- Valuations of library companies are driven by the degree of validation of the discovery platform and (in some cases), the development of preclinical/clinical assets
- Main value ascribed to biologics library companies is not due to their revenue streams, but the projected impact of the platform on future drug revenue streams of the acquirer
What does the ideal library acquisition candidate look like?
- Has validated its drug lead discovery engine against multiple targets
- Technology addresses unmet needs not addressed by other approaches (small molecules, antibodies, conventional peptides, protein scaffolds)
- Has shown sophisticated approaches to addressing key challenges:
Affinity
Selectivity
Potency
Solubility
Reliable production and formulation
- Technology is scalable
- The IP covering technology is controlled and company has FTO
- Technology is validated to yield candidates at least to IND level
(20min delay)