Vascular Biogenics Ltd (VBLT)

[wcopeland]

I think you may be conflating "survival rate of disease" with "clinical trial success rate". Yes, we are going after hard to treat diseases, but that by itself says absolutely nothing about clinical trial success rate.

(Somewhat) hypothetical example:

Pancreatic cancer is a brutal disease. Most pharmaceutical companies do not have a good way to target the disease. Let's say that most LO/DC drugs for pancreatic cancer fail to produce any signal in preclinical models, and so they never reach IND with FDA. Additionally, let's say the mechanism for pancreatic cancer is not as well understood as that of more common indications like breast cancer, because the basic research is not as well funded.

So when you say "pancreatic [is] the hardest of hard". I agree. But, by itself, it has no bearing on clinical trial success rate. Maybe pancreatic survival is poor because all drugs fail in preclinical, so there are no drugs. Maybe pancreatic survival is poor because very few companies have identified drugable targets.

Clearly in those cases, "poor survival" is not exclusively a reflection of "clinical trial success rate".


If there were a thorough analysis of the clinical trial success rate stratified by oncology indications, I would have posted that. Since there is not, I think using the "oncology stratification" is the best estimate we will have for likelihoods.