Northfield Labs: Bleeding to Death on Fake Blood

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Northfield Labs (NFLD) just imploded after-hours.  The company fell 20% at the end of the day on disappointing information chatter ahead of the review due today, but after the close it dropped them bomb.  Shares are down another 50% at $5.60, and there are going to be some diappointed and really upset betters on this company.

PolyHeme(R) is the company’s one-hit wonder product: a human hemoglobinbased oxygen-carrying red blood cell substitute in the treatment ofseverely injured and bleeding patients when blood is needed but notimmediately available. 

Because of discrepancies in theinitial data, the database will be unlocked and corrected prior tofinalizing the statistical analyses…..ouch.  Northfield still provided the full results even though it is going to retool the data.  The real problem isn’t that the data needs to be retooled.  It is that the data doesn’t look good,and in fact it look atrocious.  You can read the article here to see if you disagree, but this really looks like the end result is that PolyHeme(R) was all hype.  The company has gone though untold millions of dollars and years of work look down the drain.

So much for that product.  Too bad for the company because this has blockbuster potential if anyone can come up with a legitimate blood substitute.  You have to consider how many blood banks in developing nations where medical screening isn’t available, and also battlefield settings where blood substitutes could make all the difference in the world.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Featured Reads

Our top personal finance-related articles today. Your wallet will thank you later.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618