I believe people still have fresh memory of OPXA which created another
myth of stock market of 2009 by jumping from $0.5 to more than $6 in
one month. It is almost as incredible as CTIC.

If you take a close look of MBRX and OPXA, you will find that they
have so many similarities before the OPXA-Novartis deal was reached.

1, they both have low stock price and market capital what make them
attractive for big drug makers.
2, hardly maintain their operations and researches what make them more
willing to sell themselves.
3, promising novel technologies and pipeline what are the key point to
make the deal happen.

Now let’s have quick look of MBRX’s product candidates and
technologies

MBRX currently have four product candidates at the clinical stage of
development. These product candidates include the metabolic disease
proprietary product candidates, MB07811 and MB07803, which have been
developed as potential treatments for hyperlipidemia, and type 2
diabetes, respectively, and the liver disease proprietary product
candidates, , which have been developed as potential treatments for
hepatitis B and primary liver pradefovir and MB07133 cancer,
respectively. In addition, MBRX has compounds generated from various
advanced research programs, such as the glucagon antagonist program.

Hyperlipidemia, diabetes, hepatitis B and liver cancer are all main
diseases which threaten lives of human being, and any single drugs has
billion dollars potential market.

Technology:
MRBX have extensive expertise in liver diseases and in the pathways
and proteins residing in the liver that are involved in certain
metabolic diseases. The company has two proprietary discovery
platforms, HepDirect® and NuMimetic™, which the company have used to
develop the current product candidates and which are expected to be
used to expand the product pipeline in the future.

*HepDirect: Pradefovir, MB07133 and MB07811 use HepDirect technology,
as do several research programs. In addition to MBRX’s internal
programs, the company has worked with Merck and Idenix to discover
treatments for hepatitis C by seeking to liver-target compounds they
have designated. MBRX may similarly leverage this technology with
other companies.

*NuMimetic technology: MBRX have developed a library of unique
molecules, known as nucleotide mimetics, and have used this library to
discover compounds that the company believes have the potential to
treat metabolic diseases. MBRX used NuMimetic technology to discover
CS-917 and MB07803, and the company is also using it in certain of
their advanced research programs including the AMPK discovery project
which is conducting with Merck.

These two technologies alone are attractive enough for an acquisition
besides MBRX’s robust pipeline.

Can MBRX develop these product candidates and technologies by herself?
I hope MBRX could make it independently but the company already gave
out the answer in the quarterly report:

All research and development activities of MBRX were discontinued for
the purpose of cash reserve.

Based on the current operating plan, after considering the impact of
these recent transactions, together with the cash available at June
30, 2009, MBRX’s working capital will fund the current operating plan
through December 2009.（P18, Liquidity and Capital Resources）

The company has about 6.6 million dollars on the balance sheet and is
expecting to receive about 1.5 million dollars for the laboratory and
equipment sale in this month.

We can tell that MBRX is ready to welcome a merger.

So why I mention Roche?

MBRX currently maintains a Research Collaboration and License
Agreement with Roche. The Company’s HepDirect™ liver-targeted
technology is applied to proprietary Roche compounds to develop
second-
generation nucleoside analog drug candidates for treating hepatitis C
virus. The Company will be eligible to receive up to $191.0 million in
additional payments upon achievement of predetermined preclinical and
clinical development events as well as regulatory and
commercialization events.

MBRX already received a non-refundable upfront payment of $10.0
million from Roche in August 2008. (10-Q P13)
It is not hard to find out that it is more feasible for Roche to take
over MBRX instead of paying 100 of million dollars milestone EXCLUDE
royalty.

If not Roche, are there any other giants that can possibly lend MBRX a
hand?

The 7th Annual Pharmaceutical-Biotech Partnering Conference will be
held during Oct. 5-7. MBRX will attend this conference and we expect
that the company can demonstrate her leading technologies and product
candidates and attract other attendees like GSK, Eli Lilly, Novartis,
Abbott Laboratories and so forth.

Will MBRX realize a deal like OPXA? I am pretty positive of this.
Let’s wait and see.

* Statement: The author of this article is not a licensed analyst and
the purpose of this article is for information sharing and discussion
only, not recommendation for any stock buying, selling and shorting
activities. Please do your own research before making any trading
decision.