Those who sold yesterday will have made a small profit – not as much as they might have hoped, but better than a loss. Hopefully those that remain will be serious investors who base their decisions on research, rather than speculation. There is already a lot of information available.
Ian Dixon, the co-founder of Nyrada, started life as an engineer. He has had considerable success as a biotech inventor and seems to thrive on challenges that others see as insurmountable. For instance, it was known that stem cell transplantation worked but had practical limitations because the cells had to be frozen for transportation then thawed for use and had a limited life span; and that the exosomes inside those stem cells did all the work but it was not possible to extract those exosomes in commercial quantities. Ian invented a separator of breath-taking simplicity.
It is also well known that inhibition of PCSK9 benefits the 50% of patients who do not respond adequately to statins. This has been proven by the monoclonal antibodies Repatha and Praluent, which have some practical limitations because they have to be injected and are relatively expensive, not least because they cannot be mass-produced. When Ian Dixon read that an oral inhibitor of PCSK9 was impossible, he set out to see if that was true.
Many scientists had tried, of course, including those from big pharmaceutical companies, but all had failed. Ian succeeded.
Nyrada owns an oral PCSK9 inhibitor that should be of great interest to Big Pharma companies. The Board includes some heavy-hitters who have sold companies to Big Pharma for very large sums, yet here they are earning paltry director fees of $25,000 per year. Good luck to those who took profits yesterday, but I think I’ll stay around to see whether Ian has hit a home run.
NYR Price at posting:
23.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
