Ren Benjamin, an analyst with Rodman & Renshaw in New York, told Bloomberg News earlier this week said that he thinks the company will "be able to work through the issues with the FDA."
However, the reality is likely to be a tad harsher. The hold is the second pronounced signal in two months from the FDA that it wants to proceed with extreme caution on hESC trials. And the action has stirred some concerns in the patient advocate community, which has pressed for more speed on the research.
Even prior to the Geron hold, Don Reed, vice president for public policy for Americans for Cures, worried about the FDA posture on his blog, stemcellbattles.com. He wrote on May 6,
"The FDA hearings on embryonic stem cells have been (in my view) deeply politicized, setting the stage to block human trials, an enormous setback."He continued,
"A laundry list of new conditions may send...Geron, Advanced Cell Technology, and Novocell, and the entire embryonic stem cell research field back to the drawing board, conceivably forReed referred to the FDA hearings last month during which the bugaboo of teratomas was raised by the FDA. Monya Baker of Nature's Niche stem cell blog covered the meeting. On April 11, she wrote that the consensus from attendees at the meeting was that the FDA "seems cautious about moving forward, but not spooked."
decades."
But then came the FDA hold this week. It had to be a bitter pill for Geron. Thomas Okarma, CEO of the company, said that the company had spent four years working with the FDA and amassed 21,000 pages of documents to alleviate the agency's concerns.
Geron's stock took a big hit on the day the hold was announced, dropping to a 52-week low of $3.76. It stood at $3.97 at the time of this writing, compared to a 52-week high of $9.85.
Geron has been mum since Okarma's statement along with Novocell and Advanced Cell Technology, although we have asked for comments from all three. We are likely to hear more from Geron after it receives the FDA's written concerns.
As for analyst Benjamin's somewhat optimistic position, his firm is a market maker in Geron stock, which means that it has a stake in the company's well-being.
Is the delay about safety or Politics
ReplyDeleteHard to tell. I generally subscribe to the most straightforward explanation. In this case, it probably means that the hold is being generated by concern about safety combined with the proclivity of government bureaucrats to play it safe. Of course, there could be problems with Geron's application. Politics probably is less involved. While the president can still reach down into the FDA, his lame duck status and incredibly low standing in the polls makes him somewhat of a non-issue. The folks in Washington are looking ahead to next year and a new president.
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