I am not sure if it has been directly stated here yet or not, but it is worth metioning that last year when it was regularly communicated to us by Don that RVX would have a new partnership agreement in place by year's end, and then at year's end when it didn't happen, Don simply said "we missed it" (or something to that affect if I recall properly), well...

I was wondering if the main reason for their miss was actually due to the fact that they were still waiting to receive this Notice of Allowance from the US Patent and Trademark Office for patent claims covering the use of apabetalone in combo with Rosuvastatin in the US?  Was that the specific roadblock?

In other words, it didn't really occur to me until now that receiving this patent notification for the combination use of these two drugs may actually be a pre-requisite for any potential partnership deal.  So therefore the lack of RVX having this patent notificaiton in hand may have been main reason for why any potential partner decided to sit on the sidelines until such a time that it was awarded.  This is because the sweet spot here is in the drug combination and thus I would think it would be very important to have the IP protected first before entering into any sort of partnership deal if I were a potential partner?  

Anyway, now with this issue is resolved, or at least well on track to be resolved, maybe it clears the way for a partership deal to happen sometime in the hopefully not so distant future?   I do think it would be difficult, although not impossible, for RVX to proceed in any major way without a partner in place who is much better positioned to take this drug more easily to market and commercialize it fully.