As most of us already know that the preliminary results of a pivotal European Phase III trial of the BTG's greatest star VARISOLVE were positive.

- Overall response rate in patients (435 patients) treated with VARISOLVE was 83.4%, in line with expectations.
- Established that VARISOLVE is similar in efficacy to conventional treatments (sclerotherapy or surgery) in the treatment of moderate to severe varicose veins.
- The winning factor is that both physicians and patients would welcome this rapid, virtually painless, treatment for varicose veins.

But, the Varisolve US Phase II safety study has been put on clinical hold by FDA, continue to worry investors for about a month now since its announcement. Consequently shares oversold till today. This could be long enough and is an investment opportunity worth monitoring. Any spark of hope could easily double the share price. Base on the assumption that Varisolve may not survive the trails despite additional costs and efforts to do additional tests to accumulate enough proves and statistics or to improve their procedures, which is unlikely although sources suggest that the clinical Hold is more likely to cause a delay of 1-2 years to its commercialisation date, the net current asset value of the company alone is estimated to be around 190 – 250 (consensus from various analyst), excluding any contribution from Varisolve US and Europe. Note that BTG total revenues increased by 35% to 19.1 million (2002: 14.2 million). Investors will bet on the company’s ability to generate enough cash to carry Varisolve through till its commercialisation, which is estimated to be 2005/6/7 in EU and 2007/8/9 US. With institutional investments from Deutsche Bank AG (More than 11%), Amvescap PLC (More than 26%), Bank of New York Europe Limited and many more…, the risk may still remain significant, but definitely one to keep close to your screen. Remember that they have many more high potential projects on parallel development. Opportunity like this don't come often.

Investors are expecting BTG to clarified their strategy and plan to overcome their challenges associated with Varisolve by early 2004. The next important date will be in early February 2004 which may be an opportunity for them to inspire some confidence (2nd Annual BioPartnering North America).

My opinion : Now is the time to get in!!!

The news below was announced AFTER its share price crashed when US Varisolve clinical trial was put on hold. The deal with Gentronix Ltd should have added substantial value to its share price. There many justifications to show that the share price is substantially undervalued even before the announcement. Recent trend shows that the market is making a upward correction. The news below is about BTG's agreement with Gentronix. Its a big share of pie to market a product with a proven market of 1.5 billion pounds in 2002 and could save drug development companies as much as 180 million a year. This is certainly hard to overlook. The drug market has been on rapid expansion ever since plans to determine the complete human genome sequence by an international consortium was outlined during 1995 and was successfully completed in 2000. This simply means that there are huge unexploite markets out there, just like when a computer was invented. It could be even larger! The news below was taken from BTG:

London, UK, December 17, 2003 BTG (LSE: BGC), the global technology commercialisation company, announced today an exclusive three-year Marketing Agency Agreement with Gentronix Ltd (Manchester, UK). Gentronix, a spin off from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), was founded to develop and commercialise a genotoxicity testing platform devised by Dr Richard Walmsley (founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Gentronix). Under the terms of the agreement, BTG and Gentronix executives will work closely to promote and establish sales of Gentronixs proprietary genotoxicity testing product, GreenScreen.

GreenScreen is a yeast cell-based assay in which any genetic damage in the test cells caused by drug exposure results in an increased emission of green fluorescence from the cell in question. Genetic damage to the DNA in chromosomes is an important contributory factor in all forms of cancer and may also cause other diseases by changing the activity of genes. If a compound under test is not capable of causing genetic damage in the test cells, no increase in fluorescence is detected in the Gentronix system. GreenScreen is already being deployed in some companies, including J&J Pharmaceutical Research & Development, Belgium, where it has been used to predict the performance of prospective drugs in (more costly) standard tests required by regulatory authorities around the world.

Recent reports put the cost of bringing a new drug to the market at about 500 million, with some 160 million of this covering pre-clinical development costs. It is widely recognised that safety (toxicity) aspects or metabolic changes associated with drug candidates account for between 30 and 70 per cent of their failure rate in trials. Thus, testing drug candidates for their toxic potential (and susceptibility to metabolic change) is an important stage in the early phase of drug development, which resulted in a 1.5 billion spend across the pharmaceutical industry in 2002. It is estimated that a modest 12 per cent improvement in the weeding out of compounds with the potential for deleterious side-effects through toxic or adverse metabolic interactions could save companies as much as 180 million a year.

GreenScreen is presently under evaluation by several groups in the pharmaceutical industry. Due to its ease of use, low compound consumption, reliability, speed, low cost, and proven value in accurately predicting troublesome compounds (with over 2000 compounds tested to date), GreenScreen is providing an early-warning system for compounds which may have undesirable genotoxic properties. GreenScreen is being positioned as a medium throughput testing platform, which complements other drug development test systems aimed specifically at metabolic predictions.

GreenScreen has been developed to address a major bottleneck in drug profiling at the early stage of pharmaceutical development, said Peter McCulloch, CEO of Gentronix. By providing an economical, quick and simple test which can be run on commercially available fluorescence detection instrumentation, we believe GreenScreen will help accelerate the prioritisation of candidate selection at a crucially early stage.

Dr Mike Murray, Associate Vice President of BTG's BioPharmaceuticals Business Unit, commented "BTG's interest in working with Gentronix stems from the robustness and proven utility of the GreenScreen system. It is great to add such a powerful technology that has a natural fit with other drug development technologies in our rapidly expanding portfolio. BTG will promote the system through its executives based in the UK, Europe, US, Canada and Japan, which alongside Gentronix's expanding executive team, will ensure a truly worldwide commercial presence for the technology."

Would like to hear your point of view. Cheers!

BTG's chart seems to generate a recovery profile. You might want to have a look.

price now 167.25 up 6% since recommendation. Get in while its cheap!!!

170.25 now. On track for a good recovery.

171.25 now and its mid Jan. 2nd Annual BioPartnering North America is in early Feb.

168.25 now. Anything below 200 is still a bargain.

cpeck, I hold 10k of these at ave 360p. i can't afford to buy more and i can't afford not to!

highinterest - Feel extremely sorry for those like you who owned at 3.50p plus when they lost 60% in a day, what can you do when they drop so fast. Hope you get your mony back - good luck.

thanks dosh. I still feel optimistic [that's a name for what you feel before you really understand the situation] about the outcome and I do still add when I get liquidity, but I am pouring more into pxc and fto at the moment.
The worst of my bgc crisis came when my broker phoned me on black friday and informed me that he had 'managed' to place my limit order for 7500 at 370p whilst they were falling! By this time they had fallen to 160 and he was advising me to sell as it was a 'very risky play'. When I did sell it cost me a lot of money. He says he acted in good faith and there was no way he could have known he was catching a falling sword. I was in meetings all day so he could not contact me.
We are currently in the ombudsman's hands.

highinterest - Hope it works out for you, I bought into pipex yesterday, looks like a good share for 2004. Hopefully you can recoup some money on this.

It has been a steady riser since I bought last week looks like the recovery is underway.

thx dosh. been stocking them both for some time and already well up on both - touch wood. agree with you apple; seems as though the recovery might be getting under way here. just a few small shoots of spring perhaps?
good weekend all

Highinterest. It really depends on your risk appetite. Its share price seems to have stablised and hence drop in volatility. The market is well informed and the current price correction is there for a good reason. Good luck!!

Alert for bargain hunters, again!!! This price will not stay long 156.00.

157.75 now

I was in at 1.56

Price now 159.25.

160 now

160.75 now

162 now