Dr. Franco: DARA was founded in 2002-2003. Our goal was then, as it is now, to acquire interesting molecules or companies that we felt had an opportunity to grow either organically themselves or through development here at DARA. Those early investments led us to companies like Medivation, which is now a public company, and Surgi-Vision. Medivation deals in the treatment of Alzheimer's. Located on the West Coast, their symbol I think is MDVN. Surgi-Vision is a private company in Memphis dealing in functional MRI. What we attempted to do was invest less than 2 million in these companies, companies where we knew the technology very well and we knew the management very well. Of course, the Medivation story is a very successful story; I think the stock is now trading at 25 a share, and at one time when we invested, we owned about a third of the company. We've now divested or distributed all of our shares in that company. So we constantly look for those opportunities, but the main part of our business as it developed over the last five years is acquiring small molecules for drug development in late-stage preclinical - developing the molecule through Phase IIa or IIb to a certain value point and then monetizing that asset to the pharmaceutical industry. Our initial strategy remains the same; it's probably even stronger now since Big Pharma is looking for compounds to fill their pipeline, particularly in large and growing markets where our molecules reside. Their internal rate of return over the past several years has dropped about 7.5%. They have plenty of cash, and they are looking to improve their profit position by licensing in some high-potential compounds.
Tickers included in this excerpt: DARA
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