You are right. It is actually quite a common practice for BP. Roche did the same with Genentech. Initial collaboration with milestones and all that to the eventual US$40bn takeover.
I am of the strong belief this should have happened with IMU as well for our Hervaxx, PD1vaxx and the rest of the B cell platform already. In fact, that was the impression of what is to be in the early days. An eventual takeover of IMU by a BP.
Then along comes CF33. After that, the language changed. From takeover, it becomes collaboration, partnership and so on. The talk of takeover ceased. The enormity of a successful CF33 even in PH1 cannot be underestimated. After all, if a virus is going to work, it will just work. As observed in all the viral diseases that have spread in human kind until they get stopped by means of quarantine and vaccination.
LC in her interview with Alan Kohler states that if it even shows 1% in human what it could do pre-clinical, that itself is a game changer. What if CF33 in fact works in human as what was seen pre-clinical? Which BP is then going to be able to afford to buy out IMU? In addition, which BP will allow another BP to own this CF33 asset?
The life of IMU gets highly complex the moment CF33 entered the scene. As if that is not enough, CF33-CD19 then comes along. And LC has stated so many times now that she can't wait to share the results of the pre-clinical collaboration with both Celularity and Eureka. If the results are really very good, then that is another hot poke for any potential BP to deal with. Or as Bob Hariri said, 'it will make headlines all over the world'.
All in all, life will definitely be very exciting over the next few months, and possibly couple of years. By the end of which, if everything truly works as expected as stated by LC in that Kalkine interview, the world will become a better place for it as far as cancer sufferers, medical practitioners and shareholders are concerned.
Cheers.
IMU Price at posting:
23.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
