Hi Yelrom,
Thanks for your response. I hear you.
When I first purchased MSB shares a while ago, I looked at it as a very promising, but high risk investment. I'd either get a return of multiples on my initial investment, or I would lose it all. At that stage there were two primary questions I was concerned with. Firstly, did the product work? I should qualify here that it had to work only to my satisfaction i.e. were the results going to be good enough for me to stick with the investment, regardless of any hurdles that arose. I expected there to be bumps on the road. Secondly, if it did work, was the evidence sufficient to get it over the line with the FDA? I was not concerned about funding at all at that stage. Little did I know that, despite being very conservative with my estimates, I had completely underestimated, by years, how long it would take to get an answer, one way or the other.
Fast forward many years later and I know the product works (to my satisfaction) for at least a couple of indications. Crucially though, none of MSB's products have gotten over the line with the FDA. We don't know how the products work. MSB think they do know, and we'll know soon if the FDA agree with them. The burden of getting to an understanding of that MOA is a frustrating one to me. Not because I don't see the value in the MOA being known, but because there are many drugs out there, with a poor safety profile, where the MOA is unknown, that have been approved! It highlights the inconsistencies with which the FDA considers different products. In reference to the FDA, SI should start all his shareholder updates with, "Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in".
Two other primary questions have been added to my original two. Will MSB be able to obtain funding to continue operating, should their aGVHD product not be approved? No one knows the answer to this question. While MSB may not have obtained funding on the best terms, to date, they have always been able to generate funding when needed. I've been all over the shop in trying to articulate and quantify that risk, in any meaningful way, to myself. Past a certain point though, that funding exercise becomes more and more difficult.
The second question is, does MSB have enough time to bring their products to market? Again I have no answer other than the obvious, "this is a ticking clock". This question is tied to the earlier question about funding, and to the risk from competition. Being one of the leaders in the space has many advantages, with the possibility of being first to market, the biggest one. The disadvantage is that you can inadvertently lay out a blueprint for approval for your competitors. While I understood that this was always a risk, it still kills me that all our competitors get a short cut to the hard earned lessons that MSB has obtained from its failures.
I won't argue about the possibilities of success or failure as this appears to have been done to death. Once you sift past the personal comments, I think some posters on both sides of the fence have made reasonable cases for their positions. I still see enormous potential, and remain invested in MSB.
I want to finish off by commenting on the heart product though, for no other reason than that it's been buzzing around the forefront of my thoughts when I consider MSB. Despite it failing it's primary end point, I thought the data on the secondary end point was so strong that MSB had a decent chance of getting it approved before their aGVHD product was approved. SI has played it down though, since those results, and that has been a reality check. I do wonder though if he has finally developed a decent poker face.
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