You need to bear in mind OPT 302 has to manufactured in a facility that meets FDA approval, that intraocular injections need to be carried out by a specialist opthamlogist that has been approved in the trial, that patients will likely have monthly injections, each consultation for folow up and measurement of retinal thickness and so on aren't going to be cheap. The company has to pay for the cost of the other genuine drug, Lucentis or Afibrecept at market cost so I would imagine that's $100k per patient right there. With 990 patients in each arm of the trial, there's not much change from $200m. Add to that they delays caused by Covid and other difficulties the company ran in to in setting up recruitment centres probably added another $50m.
If there is a cristicism it might be that the company didn't properly manage its foreign exchange risks by hedging. If they had deposited the money in USD in US bank accounts then they might have saved tens of millions since most of their costs are in USD. Or it could have been lost it in a US bank collapse, which of course would have been infinitely worse.
Possibly some trader investors are out of their depth in this one.
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