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Avexis Colorado Waste of Money

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Vas is all in on Zolgenmia.

Novartis is in a race against Roche for SMA type 2.Roche got FDA priority approval for its oral SMA type candidate in spring 2020.

So Novartis needs production capacity for Zolgensmia ASAP. for its IT formulation for type 2. That is where the market and money is. Who gets there first is worth Billions of dollars.

Novartis needs NC and Boulder to get up to speed ASAP for production of the IT formulation which is where there is billions at stake. Roche received an accelerated approval of spring 2020 while Novartis has a clinical hold on higher doses or IT formulation for SMA type 2.

How this plays out is anybodies guess- lots of money at stake
 




anonymous said:
Get a clue. Three sites are trying to make this in the US and one is making it in Europe. For roughly 1000 patients a year? Yeah, they need a million square feet of space in Colorado for that. We were bought because of the ex-Amgen staff at Avexis and because it was dirt cheap. Those ex-Amgen executives were fired so we don’t have anyone who cares if Colorado stays open now. Plus the site was so cheap it’s a minor write off when they close it. But until that is figured out they’ll still hire another dozen or two people.
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Any good news out of the Longmont site? All I hear is another expensive ramp-up with potential closure in the near future...
 




anonymous said:
Any good news out of the Longmont site? All I hear is another expensive ramp-up with potential closure in the near future...
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Kind of obvious that neither AveXis nor Novartis management know how to scale Zolgensma production that matches with the original business case. Hence, let's buy Medicines Co. and try to pump a stock valuation already near all-time highs while the world markets are about to break to the downside.

Textbook.
 




anonymous said:
Kind of obvious that neither AveXis nor Novartis management know how to scale Zolgensma production that matches with the original business case. Hence, let's buy Medicines Co. and try to pump a stock valuation already near all-time highs while the world markets are about to break to the downside.

Textbook.
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What are the odds on this site being around in a year? 50:50? 40:60? 30:70? 10:90? Or is the outlook actually better than what is seen on this board?
 
















anonymous said:
Any update on this? I hear the demand has gone way down for Zolgensma. If this is true, this doesn't bode well for the Colorado site.
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All is not well. The site has asked some employees if they want to relocate to the other sites. The production schedule has slowed down to a crawl and now there's a lot of us floor support staff just sitting around. Word on the street is that there may be announcements on site status within the next month or two. Here we go again.
 








anonymous said:
All is not well. The site has asked some employees if they want to relocate to the other sites. The production schedule has slowed down to a crawl and now there's a lot of us floor support staff just sitting around. Word on the street is that there may be announcements on site status within the next month or two. Here we go again.
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It’s almost as if history repeats itself. It’s time for that leadership team to be split up and demoted.
 




If any site goes from the manufacturing network, it will be Durham. Still waiting for approval, like CO, but Novartis leases the site, unlike LM which is owned by NVS. There are temporary slowdowns, as the site approval timing has slowed due to COVID but CO isn’t the site in danger. Once CO is approved, LV will be the target for cuts.
 








anonymous said:
If any site goes from the manufacturing network, it will be Durham. Still waiting for approval, like CO, but Novartis leases the site, unlike LM which is owned by NVS. There are temporary slowdowns, as the site approval timing has slowed due to COVID but CO isn’t the site in danger. Once CO is approved, LV will be the target for cuts.
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Getting licensure at the xCO site doesn't guarantee that it will stay open. While the xCO site may be owned instead of leased it's still not a favorable situation due to poor capacity utilization of the manufacturing space.
 








So something is going on here.

Just a few months back. Vas says all is well and Dave Lennon says that if any site would be closed, it would be the contracted site- Paradign or whatever

Now 2 more months later, something has changed is it the IT trial or what is it.
You just shut down 70% of your AAV production capacity. that’s not a good sign
 




anonymous said:
So something is going on here.

Just a few months back. Vas says all is well and Dave Lennon says that if any site would be closed, it would be the contracted site- Paradign or whatever

Now 2 more months later, something has changed is it the IT trial or what is it.
You just shut down 70% of your AAV production capacity. that’s not a good sign
Click to expand...

this is the question isn’t it? What’s really going on. I’m an affected employee in this site closure. NVS is indeed leaving contract mfg at Paragon this year. And even with this, has no use for the CO site which just filed for licensure. I feel like this has larger implications for Novartis’ commitment to the gene therapy franchise but we will have to wait a little while to see what’s going on.
 




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