Nasty sentiment - If "Woodie" goes belly up so do thousands of pensioners whose funds were invested either completely or partially in his funds. It's as bad as the shorters wishing that DCVax goes belly up without thinking of all those GBM sufferers for whom failure will be devastating.

Of course he does.

The end of this trial is like a giant black hole - the nearer you get to it, the more time slows down!

Rootjim,

I too hope that the silence indicates that DCVax-L has been successful. I don't really understand the ins and outs of the Scientific Advisory Board but if the trial had manifestly failed I understand that they must advise that the trial be terminated because of "futility". The trial has not been terminated, ergo the trial has not failed.

I believe that Woodford also believes that the trial hasn't failed, otherwise why keep hold of virtually worthless shares on which he's made a stonking paper loss so far. Today's Sunday Times "Business & Money" headlines with the news "Woodford forced into £1.4bn sell-off" providing the perfect time for him to ditch his NWBO shares without generating any more adverse headlines. It would be interesting to see whether his holding in NWBO remains intact

I think it ironic that there has been much speculation on this board that Woodford was aiming for Astra-Zeneca to take over NWBO, and yet this is one company in which he has sold virtually his entire holding over this year.

Rootjim,

It goes without saying that any long investor at this stage must be a believer that the science will come good in the final analysis. They must also hope that the very long delay in unblinding the trial is necessary to ensure that the results will be sufficently strengthened that the FDA will have to approve DCVax-L.

The nagging worry for any longs is the deafening silence from Management. Is this to avoid handing AF and the naked shorters any sort of news that they can then twist to their own ends? Or is it part of something less palatable for all investors outside Management?

Biosect & Maverick,

According to you two,

Either Woodford was inept in his handling of his complaint about Management's governance as a result of which the price fell catastrophically or he manipulated the price down by going public with his not unreasonable (but, on the face of it, strategically inept) criticism of Management's governance. He then massively bought low through another company in which his involvement is hidden.

The alternative claim is that Management, when it saw that Woodford might be a threat to their control of NWBO, did not or could not try to maintain the company's share price but took the opportunity (against most shareholders' interests) to issue and sell millions of shares to dilute out Woodford's threat to them but still maintin control of the company by either buying the shares themselves or allowing only their supporters to buy them. (This is how I understnd it to have happened, but am prepared to be corrected.)

Again as I understand it, if Woodford is the evil genius his only dishonesty might be that he ultimately controls far more shares than he publically declares. In that case why wouldn't he launch the takeover or Management change that many people on this board accuse him of trying to orchestrate in the first place?

If, on the other hand, this was Management either allowing the price to fall (or even causing it to fall) so as to enable them to strengthen their hold on the company, would this not be a criminal offence since management has to behave in a manner which is fair to all shareholders and not to just a section of shareholder, ie themselves?

Which is the correct scenario? Is there any evidence is there to support either hypothesis or even a third (or fourth or fifth ad infinitum) ones?

Dear Doc,

I had noticed the advance of the fairer sex (or is that not allowed these days as being gratuitously insensitive or something) and that gives me some hope in this crooked world (despite the Donald's automatic use of the word as a prefix to his erstwhile opponent in the Presidential race). I have this deep-seated feeling that women as a group are less likely to be crooks - perhaps it's something to do with genetics and hormones - and so I believe that for whatever devious reasons there may be for the deafening silence from Management, it is not for any ulterior motive inimical to the legitimate shareholders in NWBO.

Best wishes.

I would suspect that this says a great deal about Woodford's investing ethos for his particular (adventurous/cutting edge) funds and explain why he is still invested in NWBO despite the less than happy relationship with Mrs Powers.

He may think that LP is someone who is only a few steps above AF for reliability and honesty (purely my own conjecture), but he clearly places more reliance on the process he is investing in and on the persona/quality of the scientist(s) behind the process. In NMBO's case he clearly believes in the science that underpions DCVAX and has confidence in Linda Lau (and UCLA) and the other scientists/clinicians involved and that is enough for him, although I'm absolutely sure that in retrospect he would have preferred a CEO other than Mrs Powers. If he didn't believe in the process I have no doubt he would have sold a long time ago and put his somewhat depleted returns into something that he felt to be more likely to succeed.

With this new venture he clearly believes in the process (CAR-T) as well as the Prof. Lowdell (and UCH) who is behind the new company. The fact that Mrs Powers is also involved clearly doesn't faze Mr Woodford (although I bet he would prefer her not to be involved).

Despair not, Oh thou of little faith, and damnation to those foul creatures of Satan who are otherwise known as "shorters".

Read what the good folk of BioSci Capital Partners, the oracle of "Seeking Alpha", have to say and be comforted; (https://seekingalpha.com/article/4184671-geron-latest-data-imerge-foretells?app=1)

If the FDA knuckles under to BP and other malign influences and fails to licence DCVax-L I would imagine that the authorities on this side of the pond will be only too ready to licence it as long as the trial is positive (of which I have very little doubt).

The medical providers will then be able to welcome all those thousands of dollar-spending US residents with glioblastoma multiforme to have their effective and benign treatment in an anglophone (or francophone et al) country where private medical facilities will no doubt have bought several distressed local hotels and equipped them as private outpatient centres to accomodate them in comfort whilst starting (at least) their DCVax-L therapy.

I don't know about your sources of SPs but in my portfolio (here on ADVFN) NWBO's SP has suddenly dropped to $0.01.

I trust that this is an electronic glitch and not actuality.

Fingers crossed.

Since Healthline will not allow me to view the article you have flagged up without me giving Healthline and all their associated advertisers, peddlers and data miners permission to bombard me with all sorts of unrequested adverts and the like, I am unable to consider what you have flagged up.

Can you copy and paste the article into this Board? If you can and are willing so to do I, and I reckon many more readeers of this board, would be grateful.

Thanks,

doclee

This is the Conclusion of the article.
Since AF megaphones a negative take on the figures (how he manages to do that and still maintain that his thought processes have not become corrupted), I reckon we can expect another raid by his shorting cronies and followers which, as before, has nothing whatsoever to do with whether Imetelstat works or not.

Thanks, Bio.

Qualms assuaged.

Scientific Advisory Board - What is its legal position?

As was pointed out some few days past, the Scientific Advisory Board is, as its name indicates, purely advisory. So, what is its position if the company running the trial declines to accept its advice.

If the SAB advises that the trial is "futile" and its advice is rejected, does the SAB have any statutory or legal duty to inform anybody or any entity that its advice has been rejected or is it able simply to broadcast its advice and the company's rejection of it to the world and its dog?

Similarly if the same thing happens when it advises that the time has come to unblind the trial, how is the SAB meant to react or how can it act within the law if the company rejects its advice and elects to continue indefinitely? Does the SAB just have to sit on its hands and keep its collective mouth shut until either its members die of old age or the company running the trial makes its own decision to unblind the trial?

Enlightenment would be useful to me.

Thanks, Umi. I wasn't quite sure that we were singing from the same hymn sheet. I was worried that my take on it was perhaps missing something obvious which would indicate that I was dead wrong. I now feel happy to increase my holdings.

"Sooth-saying, reading the entrails and the runes" are what spring to mind when reading many of the contributions to this board. However, the answer as to why blinding of this trial has still not happened will only truly be known when the Scientific Advisory Board tells management that the time is ripe to unblind the trial. Until that happens it is all just informed guesses based on calculations from possible numerical "facts" on the one side plus a load of doom and gloom merchants on the other side trying to beat the company into bankruptcy from where the vultures will pick up the bones at a knock-down price if it turns out that the corpse contains anything worthwhile.

The only thing that can be reasonably certain is that the Scientific Advisory Board have not yet advised that the trial be unblinded. It is from this fact alone and no other that any logical propositions as to the success or otherwise of the trial can be advanced.

REASONINGS:
1] If the trial was failing to reach either of its stated primary and secondary endpoints (longer disease-free survival and overall survival as compared with placebo) with no sign that DCVax-L was having any meaningful effect on those receiving it, the SAB would have stopped the trial for "futility". This has not happened and so one can be confident that the vaccine is having some effect.

2] If the trial had met its primary and secondary endpoints with unassailable statistical evidence of success the SAB would have recommended that the trial be unblinded as it would have been successful. This has not occurred and so it can be presumed that the trial has not been an overwhelming success in reaching its appointed endpoints and might not even have statistically reached those endpoints.

3] The fact that the SAB has still not recommended unblinding of the trial must indicate that even if the statistical case is not unassailble something is happening which may still show that the treatment can be successful and of benefit to those with glioblastoma. Most likely that will be that there is a subgroup of patients whose disease is significantly more responsive to DCVax-L and that for these patients there is the high likelihood that they will have a greatly prolong disease-free survival (eventually, for some, becoming accepted as "cured").

The only way to show that this is the case would be to continue the trial until everybody in it either died of the disease or of something else/old age and an accurate "cure rate" could be calculated. This is not practical not least because the stronger the case for DCVax-L being curative for some patients, the less ethical it becomes to withold that treatment from new patients with glioblastoma.

It is my guess that whilst DCVax-L might have a modest effect on slowing the course of most patients with glioblasstoma, there will be a readily identifiable significantly-sized subgroup of patients with glioblastoma for whom DCVax-L will not only have a marked effect on prolonging their lives but may in actuality be potentially curative. That is why the trial is continuing in order to provide irrefutable evidence to the Regulators (FDA, EMA et al) so that they cannot refuse to licence it notwithstanding what AF, BP and any other gainsayer might wish to claim.

..which sidesteps the answer which, I had hoped, would convey some new information you wished the rest of us to know.

If you are simply showing that NWBO's share price &/or its capitalisation is way below that of comparable companies, then you are not telling anything new to this board but simply (re)stating "the bl**ding obvious", leaving us to wonder why you felt it important to emphasise NWBO's sad status.

.. and the point you are making is...?

and I used to think that the FDA were the good guys!!!

Scottie, You are absolutely correct - we are not Pfizer or Merck and it is up to the FDA to give DCVax the green light.

My point is that leaving the trial blinded for a few more months is not going to make any material difference to the clear result (increased log term survival and possibly even significant numbers of cures) that shows through the presentation from the blinded data.

Continued blinding only delays the process unnecessarily for a few more months and a few more deaths.

Scotty, considering the abysmal result that now hold for SOC, I wouldn't quibble about the exact figures of longer survival. Whatever is put on the label, no matter how statistically accurate it might be, it will not help a patient who cannot get that treatment because the FDA (et al) have not been able to give it the OK because they are still awaiting the trial results which are still blinded.

Each day that DCVax-L is not on general release is yet one more day when patients who need that treatment are still denied it.

Statistically why cannot the trial be unblinded NOW?

The trial has now been closed to new entrants and all those in the trial are now being treated with either DCVax-L or placebo. If there is any disease progression it is chalked up as a significant event, the result is recorded for statistical analysis and the patient plays no further role in the blinded trial but recives DCVax on the presumption that what they were receiving was placebo. Although not now in the trial proper they, with all the other participants, will be kept under observation until they die so that the cause of death can be established as being either from GBM, its treatment or nothing at all to do with either.

From the unblinded results it is already obvious that apart from the incidence and nature of adverse side effects (which are palpably almost non-existent and mild) participants (almost all of whom are now on DCVax) are now living longer. The only 2 important questions to be answered by the trial are 1) How long is the disease-free progression (DFP) for patients on DCVax? and 2) How long is the overall survival (OS) for patients on DCVax? These are 2 obvious and unambiguous endpoints and depend solely on the answer to 1) "Has the tumour recurred?" and 2) "Is the patient alive or dead?" I fail to see how continued blinding can play any part in obtaining accurate and unbiased answers to those 2 questions. Unblinding the trial now will not skew the results through biased answers because there can be no biased answers to those 2 questions. The long survival tail can still be measured without detriment to the statistics even though the treatment status of the participant is known.

The longer we have to wait for the answer to those 2 questions, the longer patients will be denied treatment with DCVax unless they can afford to purchase it under RTT and the longer will financially less fortunate sufferers be denied the chance to live longer or even be cured.

So, what is the point and justification for continued blinding of the trial?

It would appear that the divorce is off!

No doubt we shall shortly be told by somebody from the AF brotherhood that this will be disastrous for Geron!

For what it's worth, this is the report in Seeking Alpha

Seeking Alpha shorting report

Thanks for the advice, Beartrap. Will do.

Beartrap,
Many thanks for a very reassuring answer to my query. It lays to rest many of my concerns about the silence emanating from HQ. Hopefully that will soon cease and we'll know what the answer is, hopefully in our favour.
For when that happens I wish all longs "Good Luck" (if one believes in that concept) but as for each shorter - "I wish him neither wit nor wealth, Nor but a rope to hang himself" (as the old song has it).

Beartrap,

Having met and talked at length with Linda, Les and Dr. Bosch, did you either raise with them or get any indication from them why they communicate so little publicly to their investors? They surely must realise that their reticence plays straight into the hands of the shorters and those who would put the company down for their own personal gain.

In the meantime we longs must trust to the science and bite our tongues when disrespectful thoughts about management (aka Linda, Les and Dr Bosch) come to mind.

Thanks, Survivor; very reassuring that there is a logical reason for delaying.

Forget the reason why the hold in registration of new cases was imposed and then lifted without either explanation or obvious (to me) change in the protocols of the trial,
forget the reasons for the change in ownership of Cognate and the renaming of the UK branch to Advent (and all associated matters,)
consider the very upbeat Press Release of 1 September 2017
and please explain to me (in words of one or two syllables) what benefit the exceedingly uncommunicative Management can gain by delaying unblinding of the trial any longer?
Logically I just cannot see how all this presages the failure of the trial unless I'm missing something of fundamental importance involving criminal activities. Enlightenment would be appreciated.

The message, to which this was a reply, seems to have disappeared rendering my reply somewhat pointless!

JRud, I'm not of a Machiavellian nature and so cannot immediately see the point, valid or not, that you are making.

My only concern of a devious nature is that more "provisional" shares have been issued which might become full shares in 6 months time. Is the concern that these will be used to buy NWBO back into private hands sometime around August? If not what is the concern?

Well said, Poor Man.

I'm not religous but in investing I have always held to the view that "By their deeds you shall know them" (Matthew 7:20). It doesn't matter what they say, if insiders are dumping shares- sell; if they are actively accumulating shares - buy.

P.S. I hope that Poor Man doesn't evolve into Beggarman or worse!!

Excellent.

Many thanks for going to the trouble to analyse/demolish this weasel article from AF.

Let's hope that you're right.

AF's at it again:

https://www.statnews.com/2018/02/15/northwest-bio-clinical-trial/

I do not subscribe to his newsletter, Stat Plus, so do not know what he is actually saying. I hope that someone reading this does subscribe (or knows someone who does) and can enlighten the rest of us.

Best wishes from a long term holder of NWBO

Thanks mlkrborn. You've supplied the answer.

Why Has The SP Dropped Like A Stone?

25% down so far today. Who has sold? Did a little bird tell them that the meeting with the FDA on 2nd May will not be to the company's advantage?

We ought to be told.

Why the 9% Drop??

Have I missed some bad news or unrealized expectations over the last 48 hours?

kmgno - Excellent Article Debunking the German Report

The article you found in "Rare Earth & Critical Mineral Press" together with the informed discussion it generated is a corker.

The report by the Oeko Institute in Germany, commissioned by SMSL, was brought into the discussion and was roundly criticized in several areas. This evoked a reply from its author, Gerhard Schmidt, but the critics of his report were clearly unfazed by his robust defence and were equally disparaging about the quality of his rebuttals.

From the quality of those criticisms of the Oeko report I have been left somewhat more cheerful that it should be relatively easy for LYNAS to rebut most if not all that Oeko claimed to be wrong with LAMP. However as "Nevada George" noted, the case will probably not be decided on the scientific evidence but on "politics". He recommended some reading matter on the dangers of radiation, specifically Chapt. 5 of "The Nuclear Energy Option" which discusses environmental concerns. It was published by University of Pittsburgh in 1990, and can be found here. Now all we have to do is get it translated into Malay (or whatever the local lingo may be).