Ann: Letter to Shareholders, page-35

A fair summary of the bull case for BIT.

The problem for BIT is how to collect the data that they will need to convince a large pharma company to fork out the money to take BIT225 to a phase 3 trial. BIT225 failed to show any positive effect on the normal gold standard of plasma viral load. They have some weak exploratory data that suggests that BIT225 is affecting sCD163 levels, but they have no data that this is clinically important, nor how long the effect lasts. They have no data that BIT225 has cleared HIV from any reservoir cell population, actually no data at all that BIT225 is doing anything useful at all in patients. They need compelling data that BIT225 is helping patients to get a pharma partner on board.

The problem for BIT is the cost of running a new large phase 2b trial to collect this data is likely beyond their ability and resources. Even if they manage to run such a trial and get compelling positive results, they don't have a lot of time left on their patents. We end up back at my initial assessment that BIT225 was a good idea 15 years too late.