Journalist Claims Intrexon CEO is Untrustworthy, Compares Firm to Theranos
May 16, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
GERMANTOWN, Mary. – Shares of Intrexon dropped 4 percent Friday after The Street’s Adam Fuerstein compared the company to California-based Theranos, saying its synthetic biology business venture was “all promise, no proof.”
Fuerstein’s comments were made online when he posted answers to readers’ questions. A reader questioned why Fuerstein commented on Twitter that he did not trust Intrexon’s chief executive officer R.J. Kirk.
“I don't trust R.J. Kirk because very few of the claims he makes about any of Intrexon's synthetic biology business ventures are backed with independently verifiable information. It's all promise, no proof. Intrexon is very much like Theranos. I'm not the first person to make this comparison, but it is fitting,” Fuerstein said in his article.
During a conference call with investors earlier this month, Fuerstein said he counted “at least eight instances” when investors asked specific questions about the company’s business units, but Kirk would not provide answers. Fuerstein said Theranos, which has been highly criticized for not revealing data about its proprietary blood-testing technology, “is a good lesson for anyone who trusts a business or an executive operating without transparency.”
Fuerstein went further, saying he questioned the scientific validity of Intrexon’s technology. He said it will only be a matter of time before the company’s curtain is pulled back and “investors discover nothing there.”
Calling Kirk a “wheeler dealer,” Fuerstein criticized the Intrexon CEO’s history in the pharmaceutical industry, decrying some of the drugs he has helped develop as being underperforming at best. Some of the drugs Fuerstein mentioned were Vyvanse, which was developed by New River Pharmaceuticals, later acquired by Shire , as well as the heart failure drug Natrecor, which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson . After Kirk sold that drug, deadly safety risks were discovered which rendered the drug virtually unusable, he said.
Despite Fuerstein’s comments, shares of Intrexon rebounded this morning, trading at $25.52 per share.
In March, Intrexon underwent a management realignment, which saw its chief operating officer and senior vice president of product development step down. Intrexon, a company developing synthetic biological health care solutions, said the realignment of management responsibilities was due to the “successful growth of the company.” Intrexon said the realignment will allow the company to intensify its focus on “commercializing its mature technologies” in “anticipation of a number of critical developmental milestones.”
Some of the success Intrexon has seen includes the World Health Organization’s go-ahead nod of support to Intrexon’s mosquito control methods as a possible control for the recent Zika virus outbreak. WHO noted that OX513A, developed by Intrexon’s subsidiary Oxitec, is a potential tool to battle the Zika outbreak. Intrexon pioneered a biological method to suppress wild populations of the mosquito species that carries the Zika virus through targeted release of male mosquitoes, which do not bite or transmit disease. These Oxitec OX513A males search for and mate with wild females of the species. The progeny of these matings inherit a self-limiting gene and die before becoming functional adults, the company said in a statement on its website.