@Thaliat, sweetheart, you are demonstrating just how much you don't know.
While I must say that I am surprised to have seen this announcement this morning, I am not surprised about the content. Up until yesterday we had preclinical demonstrating that Zantrene synergises and offers cardioprotection with anthracyclines in breast cancer cells, and clinical data that it synergises and offers cardioprotection with Ara-C in heavily pretreated, poor prognosis AML children. I explained to everyone that this phenomenom will most likely be seen in other therapies that cause cardiotoxicity, and here we are.
Let me explain what this means, so we can all start to get an appreciation for how massive this announcement is.
As we know, Amgen (USD $120B MC) owns Carfilzomib and its patent is expected to expire around 2025. This means that generic forms of the drugs can begin to appear on the market, which is very bad for Amgen's revenue sheet. The combination of Zan + Carfilzomib has been shown to improve the efficacy of the drug as well as protect from the cardiotoxicity associated with it. If this effect is replicated in humans, then the combination will become the new standard of care for all patients receiving proteasome inhibitors. If Amgen were to purchase the combination, it would extend the patent life of the drug a further 20 years, which would lock in great sales for the company. The major issue that I see for Amgen is the patent expiring in 2025, which means they have to get a riggle on with clinical trials if they want to be sure this combination will work in humans.
Because of this, I suspect Amgen will partner with RAC to get this combination into the clinic within the next few months. If successful, RAC can license out the Zan+Carfilzomib combination whilst maintaining full ownership of Zantrene in every other way. Essentially, if successful, RAC could sell the Zan+Carfilzomib combination for x amount of dollars, RAC shareholders could be entitled to a dividend payout per share and maybe even a royalty on revenues generated from the combination, and still be able to pursue FTO inhibition and cardioprotection for every other indication and combination.
Now, you don't have to be a genius to work out that this could happen with every single cardiotoxic drug available on the market looking to extend it's patent protection and revenue streams.
As a very important side note. A second preclinical study has confirmed that Zantrene offers cardioprotection that is separate from its FTO inhibitory function. All other FTO inhibitors are inferior because Zantrene can provide cardioprotection ontop of FTO inhibition. This means for another FTO inhibitor to be better than Zantrene, it would have to have a lower IC50 value AND provide better cardioprotection. We have hit the holy grail.
(20min delay)