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0 pointsStewsNews10y ago0 comments

Lumping Stemcentrx in with the others is extremely ill reasoned imo. The most basic of google searches show some pretty impressive stuff being done there.

http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/302/302ra136 http://www.esmo.org/Conferences/Past-Conferences/European-Ca...

While the second link is only phase 1, those are some impressive numbers.

Finally, their clinical trials page (http://stemcentrx.com/clinical-trials.html) shows two Pfizer collaborations, pretty sure Pfizer has a pretty good pulse on these things.

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w1ntermute10y ago· 2 in thread

As I stated in the sibling comment, Stemcentrx is indeed much more reasonable than either Theranos or Nootrobox. However, a $5B valuation is still absurdly optimistic when you consider the comps. There have been massive setbacks at Verastem even after getting to phase 2[0], and Verastem's science originated from a top MIT research lab.

0: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-sha...

StewsNewsOP10y ago

Agreed, that is a lot if true, the MIT article[0] gave a 3 billion number and also mentions that the latest valuation was determined by Fidelity not some silicon valley VC firm. This all leads me to stick with the assertion that I would not lump the three in any way.

0: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/541006/peter-thiel-back...

w1ntermute10y ago

The latest valuation is $5B, according to the WSJ[0]. The latest (series G) round was led by Fidelity, but Founders Fund, ARTIS Ventures, and SV Bank also participated in it[1]. Also, there's actually talk of Fidelity bringing sanity to startup valuations[2,3], rather than pumping them up even higher.

You're right that Stemcentrx, unlike Theranos or Nootrobox, doesn't smell of SV hucksterism. However, rather than comparing Stemcentrx to Theranos or Nootrobox, compare them to OncoMed, Verastem, and Stemline, which have current public valuations of $700M, $65M, and $116M, respectively. And none of them ever exceeded $1.2B in their public valuations.

0: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/09/16/peter-thiel-b...

1: https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-round/7db717567346f07e604...

2: http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/snapchat-isnt-the-only-startup...

3: http://fortune.com/2015/11/12/fidelity-marks-down-tech-unico...

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