Informagen, Inc.
Biotechnology Information Resourceinfo@Informagen.com
375 Little Bay Road, Newington NH 03801
[ Home | Addresses | Directories | Research Reports | Help ] Resource Informagen™ - Elements of a Research Report
Resource Informagen consists of research reports presented in a consistent format. The format lends a uniform structure to the information, making reports easier to read, compare and use. The research report for a company comprises at most 27 different fields and at the very least one field - the company name!
Of the 27 possible fields, 8 are directory fields (company name, address, city, state, zip code, phone number, fax number and internet address). These 8 fields comprise a "biotechnology phone book" that is useful for contacting a company or in generating mailing lists.
The next 8 fields are bibliographic in nature and include contact names (CEO, Chairman, President, CFO, CSO, year founded, stock symbol - exchange, and SIC codes). It is a never ending process to keep the contact name fields up-to-date. Over any given period of time, executives within the biotechnology field are leaving and joining other companies. Our current estimates are that these fields are probably 80% accurate at any one time.
The real added value of Resource Informagen is contained in the next 11 fields which are as follows:
Mission Statement: This is the only field in the database which is taken verbatim from a company's literature (usually from the mission statement in a news release). The reason that the company's statement is used "in toto" is that how a company describes itself is inherent to how the company views itself relative to its competitors and the encompassing biotech industry. A mission statement is a way of "drawing a box in the sand" to delineate what is inside (and included in the company's view of itself and the world around it) from what is outside the box (which is meant to be purposefully excluded). Any number of different people might view or categorize the company differently which tends to smudge the boundaries of what the company really is - or at least thinks it is! It is equally important to view the company's verbatim mission statements as they change over time. Variations in mission statements over time are delineated by the use of numerals I, II, III etc.
Family Tree: This field contains information on name changes, acquisitions, mergers, subsidiaries, divisions, and parent company relationships. In a way, it represents the company's genealogy.
Major Shareholders: The owners of equity in a company change over time, as small start-up companies founded primarily with venture capital money mature through subsequent rounds of mezzanine financing, lease financing, initial public offerings and additional rounds of public offerings or private placements. As this field developed, attempts have been made to standardize it to also include the dates that various financial institutions invested. Other biotech or big pharma companies owning equity are also listed.
Financial History: Information for this field primarily comes from company quarterly reports, 10Qs and news releases. Data on stock splits, stock repurchase, SBIR grants, public offerings, private placements, CRADAs, downsizing, bankruptcy, loans, notes, leases, etc. is provided here.
Initial Public Offering: Information for IPOs is included in this separate field, so that it can be easily compared to IPOs of similar or dissimilar companies.
Agreements: This is a large field which contains information on all types of company agreements, including joint ventures, corporate partnerships, and licenses of all kinds. Where possible data on the technology, rights granted, monetary considerations, and partner are included. Changes to these agreements over time can be tracked through the associated date fields (yr/mo) which precede each entry in the listing. Many times licenses to technology or patents obtained from universities or research institutes are also listed in this field.
Legal: The legal field contains information on lawsuits, settlements, patent infringement suits, shareholder suits, bankruptcy filings, patent interference proceedings, product liability suits etc. This information is primarily obtained through company SEC filings.
Clinical Trial Status: This field is of tremendous value for tracking the development of a product through various clinical trials over years of time. Information on Phase I, phase II, phase III, and phase IV trials and hybrids thereof is reported here. This information comes from numerous sources including trade journal reports, SEC filings and company data. At any time, a product may be involved in several stages of clinical trials for multiple indications. Information on the product, its tradename and drug name is included. Clinical trial results / status are also abstracted from conference reports, news releases or scientific publications as available.
Regulatory Approvals: At specific stages in a product's progress through clinical development, various documents are filed with regulatory agencies to request testing in humans, orphan drug designation, approval to market and facilities licensing. The filing of the relevant applications and their approval in the United States, Europe, Canada and other foreign countries is provided in this field.
Technologies: This field includes information on scientific discipline, disease area, technology platform or technology acronym / tradename employed by a company.
Products: This field broadly includes tradenames & products in research, development, clinical and marketed stages. Names of proteins, genes, trademarks, product codes, tests, assays, etc. are listed.
Copyright ©1998 Informagen, Inc. All rights reserved.
