Although investors should be pondering the myriad issues...

Although investors should be pondering the myriad issues afflicting RCE prior to investing (especially these old chestnuts)

• The corporate history and commercial track record of the founder, majority shareholder and Executive Chairman (not to mention his age)
• The potentially lethal IP challenges (reference to ‘patent trolls’ is a pointless, emotive distraction)
• The patently unqualified (pun intended) executives leading the organisation

they should be reminded that there is abundant in-vitro evidence that polyacrolein is an extremely effective antimicrobial, Melrose knows the field backwards and has applied his expertise at CMQ (a good place to compare notes).

Despite this evidence, a the key reason CMQ became unstuck, was that acrolein is highly poisonous (aside, of course, from the gross over-reach in spending $60m on a production facility that, at full production, would only operate at 80% of break-even; or the creative accounting applied to sales orders taken from South African distributors; or even the continuous disclosure case won by ASIC), but I digress..

When you make a drug from a poisonous monomer, the regulatory authorities are very interested in your toxicology reporting…. very interested. CMQ actually had tox data, and it was often quoted from, but for unclear reason, refrained from releasing it to the regulatory bodies to satisfy their interest? Makes you wonder what the results were and who put the kaibosh on letting the APVMA know?

Despite Melrose reformulating a smaller molecule and a vastly improved manufacturing protocol for RCE (great news, although a pity CMQ never got to utilise this ‘novel’ technique), …reputation goes a long way to helping and hindering progress. Melrose and polyacrolein are persona non grata at the APVMA and, by extension, the TGA. This will not help any FDA application.

But there are more reasons to be cautious. For example, the (always optimistic) timeline for taking RCE to partnering puts Dr M at around 86 years old..but more realistically, he would likely be closer to 90 before that occurred, much less commercial sales commencing.

Also, the prospectus makes a great deal of the non-health applications for the tech (oddly enough, just like the CMQ prospectus), but the market has moved on, and this tech (or near enough) is already being used in cosmetics and in antiseptics. I believe the last RCE shareholders will hear of this market opportunity will be the prospectus.

Oh, there are more issues to consider, many more, but I suspect few will put much thought into it and will focus on the blue sky aspects of this company. RCE is much like the sky – using hot air to scatter light and make pretty colours and not much else.