OncoSec Medical Inc (ONCSQ)

[Waitforit53]

From Guti, he posted something from Biocentury which I think he is a subcriber. I think in confirms my theory that Punit and Pierce are "using" Merck's "best in class" results for their own purposes toward licensing.

Since 1993, BioCentury Publications, Inc. has been internationally recognized as the leading provider of value-added information, analysis and data for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, investors, academia and government on the strategic issues essential to the formation, development and sustainability of life science ventures. Recently a senior writer published an article titled “New players in PD-1 combination therapy” Product R&D: Company Check Points, in which he mentioned the importance of the research being done by Oncosec utilizing IL-12 for helping anti-PD1 non-responders, which constitute the majority of cancer patients.
Part of the article states, “the spate of biotechs announcing new targets, combinations or milestones in the PD-1 space in the last two months suggests pharmas may not have to wait long to add second-generation therapies to their pipelines of checkpoint inhibitors. While AnaptysBio Inc. and cCAM have preclinical targets that could complement PD-1 inhibition, OncoSec Medical Inc. is about to enter the clinic with a combination that uses PD-1 suppression to potentiate the immune activation of IL-12.
The push for new compounds is driven by the fact that many patients don't respond to PD-1 therapies because their tumors have either low or no expression of the receptor's ligand, PD-L1. By acting through complementary pathways, upregulating the expression of PD-L1 or increasing the ability of antigen-presenting cells to trigger immune pathways, the next generation of compounds is designed to potentiate the tumor-killing effect of PD-1 inhibitors.”
According to the author, Oncosec will be using pembrolizumab to increase the power of IL-12 without the worries of an increase in toxicity, while studying the likelihood that the combination will have an effect on non-responders. This explains why Merck at this point is not fully committed, since the testing will only benefit Oncosec, except if it has a positive benefit on the non-responders.