In Lemelson's words, Ligand has created a "pyramid scheme of shell companies" by IPO'ing Viking that has "almost no prospect" of future revenue and earnings with no assets.

It is accepted that the ligand shell morphology of nanoparticles coated with a monolayer of molecules can be partly responsible for important properties such as cell membrane penetration and wetting.

The ligand shell has a low symmetry and produces a large number of signals in conventional proton-NMR measurement (see image, left).