Ann: Change of Director's Interest Notice, page-19

It would be crossing the line, both in business and ethically, for a company such as Neuren which has just made a deal with Acadia to come out saying anything in defence of Acadia and their product. This is a matter for Acadia to deal with. The other thing is I can imagineis the flurry of posts here if NEU management said anything at all about Acadia and the safety claims (which is all it is at this stage) of their drug. The hate posters and blamers would come out in full force had anyone at Neuren said anything at all about it, and many would have used what they said as an excuse to claim that they know it's a bad deal, Acadia is losing their one drug, too much risk in doing a deal with them, Neuren might not get what they are promised by Acadia, etc.

I remember when Gardasil came out and in the USA in particular, there was a flurry of claims that it was dangerous and that young women were dying from it. Further investigations found no direct connection, in fact in one case a girl drowned the day after getting her vaccine and was included in the statistics. It's up to the FDA to investigate and to take action if they find direct links of deaths to the drug, but in a target client base of people in their 70s with advanced stage Parkinson's, it is going to be hard going to blame the drug when it could be any number of other things. I'm taking a wait and see position on this, it's not as clear cut as making the connection from an increased number of deaths to faulting the drug.

My main issue with Acadia's one drug is that it will not be bringing in increasing revenues due to a limited market and due to the fact that it is apparently hit and miss in effectiveness, working on some and not on others. Acadia's earnings at the moment don't look too sharp. Perhaps the positive side of this is that they need a success, and Neuren is the most likely to make it to market in the near future (2 years is the near future for a new drug).