In the 29/09/23 Talking Business interview Pilcher clearly...

In the 29/09/23 Talking Business interview Pilcher clearly indicates NEU funding the PMS Phase III trial alone to be the preferred option at that time, which he describes as Plan A. His full answer to the question on intended use of the funds received from Acadia is given below.

(6:17 time point) LG: “How will the funds be used specifically?”

JP: “Yeah, it’s a very good question, and we have a big decision to make after we get the final results from the Phase II trials in December for Phelan-McDermid Syndrome. If they’re as good as we expect then we have the option to proceed ourselves through Phase III, which we couldn’t do with Debuye because, as said, we didn’t have the money, we didn’t have the market support.”

“Probably we didn’t have the expertise in those days either, but we think we have all of these three things now. So definitely an option for us is to use that money to invest in the Phase III for the second drug, and you can get a massive uplift in value if you can do that.”

“A good example is our arrangement with Adadia. Originally at the end of Phase II we licenced them in North America and they paid us US$10 million up front. We’ve just licenced them the rest of the world for an approved product now, and they’ve paid us US$100 million up front.”

“So there is no doubt if you can take a drug to the end, you know, you retain so much more of the value. So that’s, I guess, Plan A.” (7:19 time point)

“But we are not going to commit to it until we see the data and also, you know, make sure that, from a capability point of view and a risk-reward point of view, it’s the right thing to do. And we’ll also have to talk to the FDA to make sure we’ve got them on side as we did with the first stroke(?), but we’re in a great position to contemplate all of this now.”