Oxford Biomedica Share Discussion Threads

[takeiteasy] 16/5/2024 17:25

Tomorrow may be interesting to watch if we get back above 3.40 and the momentum chaps decide to rejoin the fray on a new breakout :)

dyor/nai etc

[cousinit] 16/5/2024 16:27

Hopefully Nessie is wearing a large dunce's cap...

[harry s truman] 16/5/2024 16:16

I need Brucie for this one really, but if you look at the 6 month chart in the thread header, isn't that the Loch Ness monster pattern forming?

[harry s truman] 16/5/2024 15:28

A little bit more on the Cabaletta trials reporting early data soon - it will be the 14th of June.

Quote from their boss here “With no CRS or ICANS of any grade observed in either of the first patients from the RESET-Myositis and RESET-SLE trials, we look forward to presenting initial translational and clinical data from both patients during a satellite symposium at the EULAR 2024 Congress on June 14th"

Top 2 trials on this list

Relevant OXB link for us

"Oxford Biomedica initially licensed its LentiVector® platform to Cabaletta Bio for their lead product candidate, DSG3-CAART. The agreement has now been extended to grant a non-exclusive license to Cabaletta under Oxford Biomedica’s LentiVector® platform IP for their CAR-T programme, CABA-201, a 4-1BB-containing fully human CD19-CAR T cell investigational therapy. Cabaletta Bio has received two IND clearances to date for CABA-201 and plans to initiate a Phase 1/2 clinical trial for patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and lupus nephritis and a separate Phase 1/2 clinical trial for patients with myositis.".

I'm not a doctor / scientist, but no unwanted / unintended effects in the first patients sounds a big deal to me - assuming that the actual disease response is good (and why would they try to showcase it at big conference if it wasn't?).

[harry s truman] 16/5/2024 09:34

So, back to a real meeting at the company offices then.

If you wish to attend the meeting in person, please register your intention to do so as soon as practicable by email to [e-mail], but in any event no later than 3 p.m. BST on 20 June 2024.

The Company understands that the AGM also serves as a forum to engage with shareholders and shareholders’ views are always very important to us. Therefore, to support engagement, following the conclusion of the 2024 AGM, Dr. Frank Mathias, Chief Executive Officer and Stuart Paynter, Chief Financial Officer will present on the Company’s progress in 2023.Afterthe presentation, Dr. Mathias, Mr. Paynter, the other Directors and I will answer questions from shareholders. After responding to the pre-submitted questions, shareholders will be able to ask further questions in person. Shareholders are encouraged to submit questions in advance by emailing [e-mail] before 2.30 p.m. BST on 24 June 2024. We may choose to summarise and bundle questions thematically.

From

[harry s truman] 15/5/2024 16:11

Plain language PDF of the J&J Study

[marwalker] 15/5/2024 10:25

In a nutshell Tafty GeoVax has a current capitalisation of approval 3 million dollars so unlikely to be putting a great deal of money our wayStill from acorns great Oakes grow etc

[taffy24] 15/5/2024 10:21

Thanks Harry

[harry s truman] 15/5/2024 10:14

taffy,

I'd be cautious about hoping for too much there (certainly at this stage anyway) with the GeoVax deal. I like it and it's very positive, I'd just be wary that it might not be worth as much to us as we have come to expect with OXB deals.

Remember the ABL deal in a nutshell came around because ABL couldn't make traction and get access to the lucrative markets which OXB could, whilst OXB was fast running out of space / capacity for process development work - which ABL had lots of.

We had a connection to them via Seb as an advisor to IM and a dream deal was done.

However, I think it's important to remember that if anything they had was particularly valuable, then their turnover for everything last year would likely have been more than Euro 15m.

At this point I'll contradict myself (normal, as you know) and say that as the GeoVax deal was basically this time last year and this type of work almost always seems to be invoice upon completion (not stage payments), then maybe it is worth a lot more and it just didn't get invoiced before their year end.

So this is one of those situations where I'd really like to be wrong, it's just that by looking at that £13m end of year figure and noting two locations / multiple existing contracts, it does suggest that none of the existing / legacy ABL contracts are very big.

In fact (and I'm unleashing my brush of sweeping statements here) I think that because the GeoVax link is in the public domain, and had it been significant on the OXB scale, then it would have likely appeared in our presentation (on the logo page) as a win and obvious plus of the ABL deal.

I'm not trying to be negative and I will point out the obvious that money is still money and it's always nice to have, but logic does suggest the very likely possibility here that OXB has already placed more early stage work (in value) in France than they had there in total before. Maybe not, but OXB don't do anything which will be cheaper than single digit millions, so just 3 or 4 early stage process development contracts transferred to France? Remember they also started doing that in Boston late last year too, literally because Oxford is at capacity for upstream process development work.

This is a good news story and I'm not trying to pee on it, it's just a perspective thing.

The OXB watcher in me tells me that this commercial production deal which is about to drop (see recent RNS) is likely to be worth many times as much (even if the quantities aren't huge) not least because being commercial supply rather than trial support means the duration of the contract is likely to be very much longer.

If you want one of our earlier stage contracts to focus on (out of the few where we actually know a name) then I would be looking at Cabaletta.

Cabaletta may be our biggest contract (by number of programmes) because the first deal with them is for CAART and then they like that so much that they come back to us and do a deal for CABA-201.

If you look at their pipeline that's 11 programmes, but of more interest is that "initial clinical data from each of the first patients in the RESET-Myositis™ and RESET-SLE™ trials anticipated in 1H24".

(That quote is from them). So 6 weeks left in H1 and they are due early data. Because of the way these kind of treatments work, then it will be either quite obvious that it works - and a great sign for the rest with the same platform - or it won't. That one could be very positive for us.

The secret commercial deal is still likely the biggest significant near term gamechanger of the things we know about - even though we don't know the detail (if that makes sense).

[takeiteasy] 15/5/2024 07:30

Some chunky sells being absorbed quite well - long may it last ...thanks again Harry for the ongoing lucid insights opening up a world that was hidden from me before :)

[taffy24] 15/5/2024 07:18

GeoVax Reports First Quarter 2024 Financial Results and Provides Business Update



Achieved a significant milestone in manufacturing process development for Phase 3 and Commercial Production. This is an important step toward implementation of a validated chicken embryonic fibroblast (CEF) based production system for the company’s MVA-based vaccines, with the release of the first lot of GEO-CM04S1 (next-generation COVID-19 vaccine) produced with a commercial manufacturing platform. This milestone marks the successful completion of the transfer and scale-up of manufacturing from the research-focused Center for Biomedicine & Genetics at City of Hope to Oxford Biomedica, the Company’s cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Procedures) manufacturing partner.

[harry s truman] 14/5/2024 17:52

The abridged version of that would be simply to say that if it works out anything close to guidance then I don't think they will last 5 years.

I think someone else will want the market share, understand the cost (both time and money) in getting two major vectors to that position and be willing to pay the necessary price. It may even be someone very close to home who does it in a friendly way.

[harry s truman] 14/5/2024 16:28

I've written here many times over the years that I'm in OXB for the duration. It's difficult to argue with hindsight that dipping in and out would have been a better strategy, but there have been some exceptional events along the way and with my luck I would have been on the wrong side of most.

Notwithstanding my hold forever strategy, I think there have been several times over the years when we all (bulls and bears) saw plausible scenarios where OXB would have been taken out of our hands.

Best example being when we had a cancer drug partnered with Sanofi in a phase 3 trial. If that trial met its endpoint and the FDA approved it, then Sanofi would have ended up paying us more in milestones and royalties over the drug life than our market cap at the time.

So they would of course have bought us out, with whatever premium they had to pay to satisfy enough of the major shareholders - as beginning a bid with the knowledge that they would otherwise eventually owe the target company over 700m is quite a big discount to whatever headline figure they eventually all settled on.

As it happened the trial failed, but my point is that most of us here from the old days have always accepted the odds that at some point OXB would become part of a bigger company.

I still think that applies even though we are no longer in drug development biotech for our own drugs.

The numbers for this year are almost certainly going to top the £134m upper as we already know there are things they are not including yet. They have also forecast better than 35% growth for 3 years. So better than £180m next year. Better than £245m in 2026 (when they told us at the interims they were aiming for £180m in 2026 - not a bad change in 6 months that, is it?).

They have told us profit next year, better than 20% EBITDA margin in 2026, so better than £50m earnings in 2026?

So, come 2026 then the growth forecasts for the CGT market size will either have come true or they won't.

If those forecasts have become true and there is a new goldrush then big players will be looking for a piece of that market and the only practical route in is to buy a share of the market as starting from scratch takes too long.

OXB are at the moment the only CDMO which is pure CGT, so buying it at whatever cost would all go into that CGT market exposure. If any suitor / predator can tell its shareholders "yes, it's a lot of money we have to pay, but this company earns a million pounds a week which will go straight to our bottom line" then we all know what will happen don't we?

The only questions being who, when and how much. We know it won't be cheap or soon for reasons already covered, but we have seen "good" companies in this sector bought for 12x sales. That would be nudging £30 per share in 2026 on current predictions. I'm certain enough people would say yes to that and then OXB simply becomes "an ACME company" or whoever.

A lot of hurdles between now and 2026 though, not least getting back into the FTSE250 which you know is my target for this year.

[steeplejack] 14/5/2024 13:55

"....nobody has cracked it yet. Will this be the one? Give it 5 years and we will know."5 years falls within my actuarial ambit but i'd rather the revelation wasn't pushed out too far!

[harry s truman] 14/5/2024 13:16

It's something you can't teach Dom (this power to curse share prices) but those of us who have it learn to live with the great responsibility.

Meanwhile let's hope the US brings a good afternoon whilst we wait for OXB news.

[harry s truman] 14/5/2024 13:12

You've got to be really cautious with news stories Red, because first and foremost the news outlet wants a story and cancer cure stories are always popular.

The stories to watch are those where there are enough patients to prove the concept - i.e. it statistically can't be a fluke - and then lots of data over time.

I'm sure it will come and meanwhile we all wish the best for the chap in the story.

One which popped up in my feed this morning was this

Whoever perfects that one will make billions, but many have tried and nobody has cracked it yet. Will this be the one? Give it 5 years and we will know.

[reddirish] 14/5/2024 12:56

The evidence that vaccine based approaches are effective in cancer treatment is being shared more openly. Soon it will become public knowledge, and then an expectation. A bright future for OXB.BBC News - Richard Scolyer: Top doctor remains brain cancer-free after a yearhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-69006713

[dominiccummings] 14/5/2024 12:03

It looks like you DID curse it Mr President Sir. But now it seems like it is wobbling while it decides whether to go up or down.

[harry s truman] 14/5/2024 11:45

That's a good point, but remembering GeoVax are a US company, what I'm really getting at here is that I'd bet another pound of Dom's money that ABL - particularly Lyon (maybe not so much Transgene's former manufacturing arm in Strasbourg) - will be linked to a prestigious French university in the same way that OXB are with OU.

Meanwhile are we nearly out of our little dip here and climbing - ready for me to curse it again?

[plutonian] 14/5/2024 11:17

Yes, we have an agreement with GeoVax for their next-generation COVID-19 MVA vaccine in France.

[harry s truman] 14/5/2024 11:05

Plutonian,

Another point here (just to add to the ever growing possibilities) - do you remember the chat when they were covering the many pluses of absorbing ABL?

"This transaction would expand our viral vector service offering into areas including pox virus, MVA, and vaccinia".

Possibilities here that ABL were providing a similar service to a French university and now we do both?

[harry s truman] 14/5/2024 11:00

Red,

They don't seem to do that. Remember Frank's quote from the results a fortnight ago about the new commercial deal:-

"I would like to note that this figure excludes a new order with a US client preparing for commercial launch, which we announced in March recently."

He has previously said words to the effect that unless it's certain / announced then it doesn't get counted as he prefers to give us nice surprises over disappointments.

[harry s truman] 14/5/2024 10:56

You know I'm a card carrying OXB optimist, but I think they were already a go to partner for the Jenner Lab at OU, which was what led to OXB being front and centre with the covid vaccine.

OU may have the brightest and best in their labs, but they can't do everything, which is of course where AZ, Serum and OXB come in (or any permutation of). Professor Hill has variously mentioned the old / existing / established / proven team when talking about malaria. I'm sure that will be equally true for quite a few of their current projects.

So, Oxford University partnership possibilities now = Lassa fever + MERS + likely Malaria via Serum + Junin + NipahB vaccines.