Let’s check in on biotech’s first cryptocurrency

Remember Agenus, the biotech company selling “tokens” to fund the development of a cancer drug? Despite all the chagrin and shrugging that met the idea last month, the company is moving forward with the plan, and it finally explained how the whole thing will work.

In a presentation to investors, Agenus said it expects to sell each token for an average price of $1.36. Each token entitles its holder to a royalty on AGEN2034, the company’s not-yet-approved cancer immunotherapy. According to Agenus, that immunotherapy is on pace to win approval in 2021 and generate U.S. sales of $450 million by 2026, which will put roughly $140 million in the pockets of its crypto believers. That’s a five-fold return in just five years.

But those numbers are based on two sizable assumptions: that AGEN2034 works well enough to convince the FDA, and that it manages to make any money as the seventh drug of its type on the market. Agenus explains itself in a fairly remarkable slide, pointing out that drugs like AGEN2034 have “a 100 percent approval rate” and that its therapy addresses a “high unmet need” despite, again, being the seventh drug of its type.

Tokens are available to accredited investors here.