At the time when I heard that there were no details hammered out into thought that was quite odd. But having had time to think about it, I don't see any issue at all, in fact I see it as a positive.
Firstly, we are looking at 2 individual separate products. It's not an in-licensing where all the details on profit sharing etc would need to be worked out prior. This is essentially a collaboration to see if and how the two products work together. At the end of the collab if either walks away then nothing is really lost. One is not dependent on the other for success, that is unless we look at the solid tumour market. Then logically speaking, if cf33 works as intended then IMU's cf33-CD19 should work with any CD19 CarT to further enhance solid tumour eradication. If CELU's CD19 CarT works as intended then the only way they can get to the solid tumour market (so far) is through IMU. This is essentially the root of Bob's excitement and why he's willing to throw all their resources such as manufacturing etc at IMU's disposal. He has the opportunity at a look-in on an untapped market, whereas it doesn't matter (in basic terms) to IMU which cd19 CarT gets used, the untapped market is accessible only through us(so far).
I see the collaboration as a great thing for IMU, we get to speed up the trials, we have additional resources at our disposal, we have a carT to trial with and we have no strings attached. CELU is exponentially more dependent on IMU than IMU is to on CELU. I suspect that no details have been nailed down simply because IMU doesn't want them yet, whereas I suspect CELU would be quick to lock it in early if they could.
Always going to be arguments both ways. Over hyped, down rampers. Somewhere in the middle is probably the right sentiment. Forest or trees?
(20min delay)