Amarantus Bioscience, Inc. (OTC:AMBS) Shrinks on Underwhelming News

Yesterday’s trading session saw Amarantus Bioscience, Inc. (OTC:AMBS) drop over 27% and have nearly 4 cents sliced off its share price. What is particularly unsettling about the slip is that it happens immediately after the long-awaited public announcement AMBS made at the OneMed Forum on Tuesday.

Following quite a long string of promises and hopeful-sounding preliminary result announcements on part of the company, succeeded by dampening corrections and clarifications by the Michael J. Fox Foundation who funded the comparative study of Amarantus’ MANF protein, AMBS finally came out with the final data from the study. The grand unveiling was made at the OneMed Forum in San Francisco this Tuesday.

Sadly, the AMBS presentation, carried out by the company’s CEO, CSO and development adviser and available as a video webcast, was rather underwhelming. The presentation highlighted some positive aspects of the company’s proprietary MANF protein aimed mainly at Alzheimer’s and traumatic brain injury treatment. It however brought virtually nothing new to the table. Previous news releases and filings from AMBS have been chewing through the same information and the same very early, pre-clinical rodent tests and their positive results. The company has been talking about moving to the next level with primate testing for months now and the CSO mentioned that again in his OneMed speech.

Mr. Rubinfeld, the company’s development adviser of Amgen fame, spoke last at the presentation, expressing his strong belief that MANF could branch into other applications, as well as his intention to help AMBS put their product on the market. Sadly, he said nothing of the strategy AMBS is planning to employ to see that happen.

This was probably not what investors were hoping for, after AMBS stoked up expectations for a bigger splash at OneMed. The company still has next to no cash and has not secured sufficient capital to push to clinical trials. This is not to question the company’s good intentions or their willingness to provide a cure for Alzheimer’s, it’s just that the progress being made in that direction is very slow and given the current lack of funds, it doesn’t look like things are about to change.

The company losing over a quarter in value in a single day on a volume of over 50 million shares traded looks like a major disappointment, especially given that it happened on the day following the supposed huge announcement at OneMed. AMBS may have a shot with their product, somewhere in the future, once they’ve secured sufficient funding that’s not horribly dilutive. It just seems it’s too early to tell whether this is going to happen and when.