Synairgen Share Discussion Threads

[festario] 28/9/2020 15:56

Groundhog day.... non stop drop.The chart doesn't lie unfortunately.

[njb67] 28/9/2020 15:51

You too.

The role of interferon in fighting Covid infection appears to be a very promising line of enquiry and the initial SNG001 results are impressive. It will be interesting to see the full set of results once they are ready.

With the caveat that you probably know more about the regulatory side of things than me, I believe an expedited route to market is a given. It could be formal regulatory approval for treating patients with Covid, it could be simply fast tracking the product into hospitals as part of a confirmatory study.

The UK government and its agencies are very open to anything that can help them to manage Covid-19 more effectively, especially diagnostic testing and treatments. They have also committed very significant investment in vaccine research and pre-orders. While ordinarily medicines that are made available in the UK under the early access to medicines scheme are provided free of charge by the manufacturer, I would be amazed if some commercial agreement cannot be reached ahead of a licence being granted in the event that the NHS decided it want to introduce the product sooner rather than later.

To put the speed at which things move into context, the dexamethasone Covid study results were published on 17 July and the MHRA issued guidance on the use of corticosteroids in treating Covid on 3 September. NICE also issued guidance to the NHS on the same day, so we know that the agencies will work at pace for the right interventions.

I have not looked into Synairgen as a potential investment. A few initial thoughts and questions based on what is a skim of the company and data. They are inter-related and are trying to establish what commercial barriers to entry Synairgen can put around the product.

1) Patents - I see these have been applied for. Do we have any sense of how likely are these to be granted? Is there a risk that other companies will seek to challenge them?
2) Competitor products - interferon beta is not new and there are a number of other potential suppliers, which could mean significant price competition. Is there a reason to believe that the inhaled version is superior to other forms of administration? If the formulations of interferon beta are interchangeable or sufficiently similar, then how quickly will this market commoditise, with correspondingly thin commercial operating margins/profitability? We have seen this happen with the introduction of biosimilar medicines
3) Procurement - given the scale of Covid, there will be intense pressure to secure necessary supplies as cheaply as possible. This links to point 2 albeit there is a strong willingness to purchase effective medicines.

Apologies if these are naiive questions as I have not researched the company but would be a useful starting point for trying to figure out how much the company could be worth.