Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
FTM: Agreed, Sonoma,its people and weather and wine are great. I'm there weekly on Mon.PMs. Thanks for the reminder re. Duramycin binding to a chemically close sibling "PE" (instead of PS). I always timed your sebatical from here with appearance of Thorpe's paper and patents re. Duramycin. Anyway, here is a good potential app for PPHM anti-PS/anti-PE patent portfolio. It also reinforces my belief there is a huge Chinese interest in PPHM that is not noted here. The article is in Apoptosis. 2014 Jan 24. [Epub ahead of print] Positron emission tomography imaging of cell death with [18F]FPDuramycin. Yao S, Hu K, Tang G, Liang X, Du K, Nie D, Jiang S, Zang L.
The noninvasive imaging of cell death, including apoptosis and necrosis, is an important tool for the assessment of degenerative diseases and in the monitoring of tumor treatments. Duramycin is a peptide of 19-amino acids. It binds specifically to phosphatidylethanolamine a novel molecular target for cell death. N-(2-18F-Fluoropropionyl)duramycin ([18F]FPDuramycin) was prepared as a novel positron emission tomography (PET) tracer from the reaction of duramycin with 4-nitrophenyl 2-[18F]fluoropropionate ([18F]NFP). Compared with control cells (viable tumor cells), the in vitro binding of [18F]FPDuramycin with apoptotic cells induced by anti-Fas antibody resulted in a doubling increase, while the binding of [18F]FPDuramycin with necrotic cells induced by three freeze and thaw cycles resulted in a threefold increase. Biodistribution study in mice exhibited its rapid blood and renal clearance and predominant accumulation in liver and spleen over 120 min postinjection. Small-animal PET/CT imaging with [18F]FPDuramycin proved to be a successful way to visualize in vivo therapeutic-induced tumor cell death. In summary, [18F]FPDuramycin seems to be a potential PET probe candidate for noninvasive visualization of in vivo cell death sites induced by chemotherapy in tumors.
this FTM message was deleted, and is herewith restored: "Lately I have been diverted by other things. "....." I am thinking that nanoviricides would be complementary to bavituximab. Many infected host cells will express PS on their surface when infected by a virus. Of course, bavi can target this PS and then macrophages can destroy the cell. However, bavi doesn't seem to be that great at attacking free floating virions in the blood. This is where the nanoviricides work. They don't work on infected cells, but on the virions. The combination may well eliminate the virus from the host. It would be great to try that out in a preclinical study. NanoViricides has a version for the Dengue virus in the works. Might be a good virus to try the combo on.
FTM, FTM, is it really you? Please flash your anti-phosphatidylethanolamine receptor site as proof that it's reaaallly you.
Correct me if I'm wrong: the latest price/volume spike was an error related to use of PPHM stock symbol when a brokerage house published a $10 stock price target intended to relate to another company? I've been AWOL from reading y'all's pearls for a few days.
Eyebuy, agreed about not very complex algorithms, but why is it always so much easier to see it after the fact than before or during. How's this scenario, a little company with moderately good news (fasttrak) which assures the hedgies the company is not going to crash on its own for the next few days/weeks; pump in several million along with the retail loose change that invariably follows such huge updrafts, and then harvest the nickles and dimes...over and over again. Real estate anyone?
Bungler, yes, fully humanized 2C3. 7/22/09: Peregrine Pharmaceuticals and Affitech today announced they have entered into a licensing agreement for antibody therapeutic rights under Peregrine's preclinical anti-VEGF (Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor) antibody program. Under the terms of the agreement, Affitech will license exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize products under Peregrine's selective anti-VEGF intellectual property portfolio, including the fully human antibody r84 [r84 = “a fully human IgG that phenocopies 2C3”, aka “PGN311”, aka “AT001”], which was discovered by Affitech and jointly developed by the companies under an ongoing collaboration. Under the license agreement, Affitech will be responsible for future preclinical and clinical development and potential product commercialization. Peregrine will receive an upfront payment, research fees and future milestone payments potentially totaling in the double-digit millions (US$).
fantasize: Fabulously positive Cotara lung cancer or 2C3 trial results out of China or Russia. How would such news come to us? What harbingers of good news? A letter to PPHM management from the People's or Putin's Republic? Not. Stock market jiggles? Unexplained spikes? Publication in the peer-reviewed Russian or Chinese medical literature? A scientific meeting? Imagine: a scenario in which we would know by stock market behavior before PPHM management knew they had a winner through science or business channels. You can bet China and Russia would have money interests lined up even more flagrantly than this country's adoption of Bavituximab for cancer treatment. I think we are overdue on a report for other pharmacological weapons in Peregrine's anti-cancer arsenal.
interesting stuff biopharm. eagle-eye. eom
exwannabe, precisely. And while dredging up other old maids on PPHM's dance card such as Cotara in China, maybe we should have a company update on other PThorpe masterpieces such as 2C3 (VEGF-R2),a better antiangiogenesis MAB (more specific/fewer side-effects) than Avastin. 2C3 is now equally obscure as Cotara in China somewhere in Russia in clinical trials. And there is fully humanized Bavi (PGN635 [aka 1N11]), a MAB missile capable of carrying a small-molecule anti-cancer bomb payload being worked on in Denmark, and used with success in prostate cancer models; and tTF, truncated tissue factor, and another Thorpe/PPHM patent, Duramycin, a peptide that binds to phosphatidylethanolamine, and...and...
exwan, you said, "The possibility of an immune response to a biologic agent is present in all biologics. Certainly this data is gathered in the early clinical trials. I doubt there is a showstopper there." Agreed, even though Cotara is mostly mouse, it isn't the type of cancercidal agent you plan to give repeatedly. Bavi, on the other hand, is something I would personally take weekly as a preventive/prophylaxis.
You said, "Also, I had suspected that GBM was chosen as the initial target to counter exactly this argument. The BBB works both directions." YES, I've said that for years. For those non-scientists here, the BBB Exwannabee is referring to is the blood brain barrier, a VERY import barrier to blood-borne pathogens and even some drugs. Cotara MAB is too large to be given IV and pass through the BBB (blood brain barrier), and into brain tissue, thus the microwave convection catheter delivering it directly into brain and into glioblastoma multiforme GBM malignant brain tumor.
You mentioned "TSA" issue, and I'm not sure what that abbreviation means. .
stockweiser, taking on Cotara to most big pharmas would be a bit like your town taking on building a nuclear reactor. Regulatory agencies. I131 has medical uses now, but mainly for taming overactive thyroids, and for some thyroid cancers. But how do you tell a patient they can't walk through an airport security scanner for 8 days after taking a medication? I am sure there are other issues with Cotara such as MAB size, immunogenicity (causing allergic reactions with multiple use), and possible bone marrow suppression, but these are only educated guesses and nothing I have seen in writing. I think a frank discussion of that technology is long overdue.
md1225,thanks. Methinks all the science "heavy lifters" here can take a breather at this point. You (and many others) have definitely done your part in supporting the validity of the anti-PS platform, and PPHM's Bavituximab. Your articles have been most informative and appreciated, making the science more understandable to those with expertise in other fields. But as you said, "It CAN become an obsession." Maybe that's what happened to our respected science guru FreeTheMice. I suspect he too will return at some point. The best thing about due diligence and posting our findings is it keeps us current on the science, and hopefully on sensible sentence construction. Cheers! and thanks again.
stockweiser, Cotara IS as exciting as "naked-Bavituximab" (unarmed anti-PS MAB)because it is a killer of difficult, almost-impossible cancer cells found in the necrotic anaerobic miasma at the core of most large cancers which grow so fast they actually outstrip their blood supply. Those cells may become dormant, but not dead, and because of the anaerobic environment are difficult to kill. That is the attraction of I131 delivered (by whatever means)to the core of large (>1 inch) tumors which cannot be surgically resected. The I131 penetrates to the center and emits beta/gamma rays which kill for several mm.s in all directions. It is going to take big pharma capabilities to move Cotara to the treatment table though. It is possible that considerable work remains in reshaping the MAB, something I am hopeful will happen in China. However, absence of any word out of China on their "Cotara" trials is not a positive sign at this point 7? years after PPHM licensed it there. I could get very excited about a combination of Bavi and Cotara for hitting the surface of tumor,the blood supply, the immune system, and the core.
wook and biopharm, I'm not sure Cotara is in play here, but it should be. The bugaboo about radioactive iodine is just that. Today it is not in vogue, but tomorrow it might be. It's a no-brainer really, a treatment modality that would work much better in an autocratic political environment (e.g. China) than in the malpractice arena of western countries. So we await news from China about Cotara. The beta and gamma ray emissions kill tumor. Period. The concept is solid: delivery of radioactive iodine, a proven cancer killer, to the tumor while shielding the thyroid. Simple. We'll see. Glioblastoma multiforme with a special catheter is a pretty minor application compared to lung cancer and liver cancer. Cotara penetrates to the core of cancers where anaerobic conditions allow survival of cancer cells being treated with chemo and/or irradiation, and there it releases the gamma and beta irradiation, killing refractory cancer cells at a reasonable distance from the emission source. All the Cotara anti-TNT therapy platform requires is a more modern (smaller) MAB missile.
wook, what's brewing? some here act as if they've never seen PIII accumulation. same old, same old. try to outfigure the computerized random numbers generators if you're trading, or stop watching. product hasn't changed a bit in the last week.
...and radiofrequency ablation applied to Bavi?:
Radiology. 2013 May;267(2):405-13. doi: 10.1148/radiol.13120249. Epub 2013 Feb 25 Radiofrequency ablation and immunostimulant OK-432: combination therapy enhances systemic antitumor immunity for treatment of VX2 lung tumors in rabbits.Hamamoto S, Okuma T, Yamamoto A, Kageyama K, Takeshita T, Sakai Y, Nishida N, Matsuoka T, Miki Y.
"Survival was significantly prolonged in the combination therapy group..."
"CONCLUSION: Combining RFA with local injection of immunostimulant OK-432 may lead to indirectly activation of systemic antitumor immunity."
Sumpin' new on Cotara in China. Was this posted?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23964639
Cancer Biother Radiopharm. 2013 Dec;28(10):725-30. doi: 10.1089/cbr.2012.1418. Epub 2013 Aug 21.
Radiofrequency ablation before intratumoral injection of (131)I-chTNT improves the tumor-to-normal tissue ratio in solid VX2 tumor.
Zheng SG, Xu HX, Lu MD, Yue DC, Xie XY, Liu GJ.
"CONCLUSION: RFA [radio-frequency frying of tumor] before intratumoral injection of (131)I-chTNT can dramatically improve T/NT [tumor/normal tissue ratio], demonstrating the potential application of this combination therapy [in a cohort of 30 rabbits]."
We're moving forward with Cotara...?
duke's boy, good to hear. Your wife is right...buy,buy,buy. wish I had some cash! Remember, what the hedgies bring forth, the hedgies can take back. I remain cautiously optimistic, and it seems likely PPHM anti-PS platform is going to be around for awhile. We are only scratching the surface treating cancer with Bavi. So far we have enormous animal trial data for safety and mechanism of action, established safety and apparent efficacy against advanced lung cancer in humans, and probable breast and prostate cancer activity. Perhaps liver. Almost certain anti-cancer booster for other immunologic agents. Even ho-hum liver cancer results should not derail Bavi-express.
seagull2, agreed. nice post. eom
wildhorses, eyebuystox, md1225: could not agree more, md. you have it 100% right IMO: "The stock is now in play". PPHM has the goods "its the real deal" are the words of these folks [who buy and sell large lots]. No funny business going on as EBS suggested. In their opinion just accumulation of large lots at a very low price. Set the stage. Own a large block and push the buy on the news is what is the plan. The CNBC blurb was a cue "it's time". Eyebuy and wildhorses, agreed that adaptive immunity is fascinating part of the anti-PS package/platform. Again, we need to all be on the same page about the fact that immunologic agents are NOT going to cure large cancers, and might not even show impressive slowing of time to progression on bulky tumors. The "Bavi package" includes accelerated diagnosis of small cancers before they attain "critical density" requiring chemo, irrad., and surgery, as is the current state of diagnosis and treatment. The best thing about Bavi IMO is that it enhances the effects of current cancer therapy: chemo-, irradiation, and surgery. It is not a threat to the establishment. It makes the establishment look better. It doesn't cost the establishment a dime. We're definitely moving closer to the goal line folks.
hey EBS, is this the bandwagon yet? eom
bioBS, good post. Seems the title of the talk says it all. Any observations of Bavi effects in mice that have not proven to be true in humans?
CP, nice. You must type 100wpm. Re. "Are you still counting daily pps cent moves," I must confess "yes". And/or "did you evolve into the bigger picture?" Another "oyes". I continue to read the post here, and remain awed by the erudition (and humor) of you all." Wish I had more to add, or there were more basic or clinical science discoveries to parse. Until then I will remain a part of your readership base. After many years here, and from a professional vantage point, for cancer patients AND investors PPHM remains IMO a better "gamble/bet" for big rewards with each passing year. The antiphospholipid therapy platform remains solid and continues to expand (slowly). Cheers!
Anyone's view on going it alone change today?eom
curlew,intersting stuff. Plerixafor has been around for a while, currently in 31 clinical trials, mostly for myeloma and lymphoma.
less than $150k worth of buy orders 90 minutes into 1st trading day of the year says volumes about the buying public's perception of PPHM. Certainly almost everyone here found PPHM on their own, and not at the suggestion of a broker. Sooner or later the word WILL get out. Without knowing the science any broker would be crazy to recommend it based on track record and float.
Today PPHM remains a very good bet. In fact, prospects have never appeared brighter for the company, and I have been invested and followed the company for many years. I would not hesitate to suggest Bavituximab to patients, family, and/or friends. From a clinician's point of view, I view those who have slowed its progress through the pipeline to be near-criminals. The price is a horrid disappointment to us all, and is an obvious reflection of the existence of more forces interested in keeping the price down than seeing it rise. The fact that well-known, acknowledged leaders in the field of immunology and MAB technology have never heard of PPHM or Bavi lends credence to the theory that widespread consumer AND professional acceptance is not merely a matter of promise, elapsed time, or efficacy. It takes a concerted effort by enormous PR forces to move the needle, and to date the financial community cannot endorse a starter with PPHM's track record when there are even many within the relevant scientific community who have never heard of it, and many who are taking a wait and see position. I have predicted for years that Bavi will pass muster with the FDA; that is not THE magic bullet for cancer; and that PPHM should go it alone for maximum stockholder gain. PPHM's Bavituximab has a very good safety profile; low side-effects, and established anti-tumor activity. Bavi-, or Bavi-like medications will eventually be used in conjunction with a vast array of medications, and as a nasal spray prophylaxis in combination with antibiotics. PPHM's anti-PS platform is solid, and will grow exponentially once it can market its first spin-off. Cheers to all present on the "long march", and recent converts.
drontle2,far from a "psychological roller coaster" the news blackout for the last 15 months has baselined any and all reason for being here other than for friendly chatter. Some have done a lot of heavy lifting in the remote past (preclinical even)to validate the science concepts for those unschooled in same, and are plainly tired of it. The rest is up to the money folks. The antiphospholipid platform remains solid, resilient, and relevant. When it will surface in the clinic is the question now, and it appears that it will take some clout outside big pharma on the order of the Gates Foundation to move the ball from here. Sad but true.
Maybe this will help PPHM: email from Susan Desmond-Hellman, MD, PHD, former CEO Genentec (DNA): "As a fellow alumna/alumnus of our university, I wanted you to know of the announcement I made minutes ago to my colleagues at UCSF. With mixed emotions, I have decided to resign the chancellorship. But, as explained below, I am accepting a challenging new role as CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and will continue my commitment to public service. I thank you for your support during my tenure as chancellor and encourage you to join me in supporting UCSF and my successor in the years to come." If anyone should know about PPHM and MABs it is Susan.
rome75, you're right. roche folks and/or dr. garnick can afford some strategic mistakes when bringing a new platform forward... and they have made a few. Nobody is perfect on new ground. I don't mind terribly the errors made along the way, most before Roche/DNA were fully aboard. For instance it was a matter of survival to start trials with Bavi + chemo rather than Bavi+ irradiation. That was a time when unknown forces were REALLY trying to starve PPHM, and the last straw to grasp before drowning was Bavi+chemo trials in India. We did not have the wherewithal to run a trial in this country then. But that was then. See? Things HAVE improved. We are here because PPHM stockholders have carried the load for this cheapo R&D for enormously well-moneyed big pharma people. We've seen a 20%+ drop in stock value compared to broader markets in the past few months, and mostly dilution. We can reasonably expect a near-spectacular multiple on our investment if Bavi flies. Remember, they will take our shares for whatever they can get them for.
hookula has it right. Sez "You should be buying all the shares you can in the next few months..." Also,IMO this board has not deteriorated so much as the news stream from PPHM has closed... concluding a quiet and difficult year indeed. Consolidation. No bad news. Bavituximab has established and enduring safety and has anti-tumor activity. This year we understand better WHY it has efficacy when administered as a "naked" antibody. Now "industry" is check out if they can easily synthesize something a bit more "upstream" in its activity than Bavi. So far the tech is holding up. As far as I know. PPHM continues to explore the appropriate indications for its use while awaiting a white knight to give the company a financial updraft to support Phase III Bavituximab human trials. Let's get on with it. So who is holding the price down? How does a stock hover at this level without support. And why does a product with so much application in cancer treatment stall in development? Or is it stalled? We know Bavi is probably not the best iteration of spin-offs from this technology. Can it be distributed and used in combination with other immuno-stimulants? In an ideal world Bavi would be used simultaneously BOTH as a "contrast medium" (a "dye") for spotting tiny tumors, AND a simultaneous treatment, by whistling in immune cells. Bavi will have best application when tumors are suspected and treated before they become distinctly visible on CT or MRI. Until then, we need more than immunostimulants, and attacks on tumor vasculature. We need directed cytotoxins, and specifically those that can penetrate to the core of medium size and large tumors and kill the dormant cancer cells there that irradiation and chemotherapy cannot reach (read: Cotara).
Who has the money to stabilize the price of a penny stock. Huge numbers of entities: GovernmentS,university interests,large corporations, and, globally, a raft of individuals. Why? If the anti-phospholipid platform is hefty as we think, its development will have a huge effect on mankind. Is that dreaming? I wrote here a couple months ago about meeting the (grand?)mother of monoclonal antibody therapy, forming a new company with an anti-cancer antibody. When I asked her in private after the meeting what she thought of PeregrinePHM Bavituximab she looked at me blankly and said, "I've never heard of it". One take-away is we're in a pretty narrow corridor of pursuit. Hopefully it's not that we're barking up the wrong tree...or alley.
biopharm thanks for all. Example? You wrote,"From the way I see it.... "some" of this contributes to allowing some Doctors to actually be advising the completely wrong drug and treatment to some of their patients due to Big Pharma agendas."
Also, FDA requiring all clinical studies be published in peer-reviewed journals does not insure that the editorial board of a given journal is going to accept a negative clinical trial result for publication. Seems like they could all merely be listed somewhere...such as in an FDA bulletin... published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Indeed a terrible year for PPHM stock, but there seems to have been considerable company consolidation. The science continues to have great credibility IMO, and the anti-PS platform is stronger than a year ago. MAB applicability in general, and anti-PS MAB(specifically)continues to expand. I moved my investment from IMCL to PPHM a decade ago because I thought Cotara was the next generation of MAB that could carry cytotoxic agents beyond cell membrane into the necrotic core of cancer cells where surviving cancer cells spawn recurrences. And I thought Bavi would be carrying a cytotoxic payload to tumor vasculature and cancer cell membrane and stroma. The misfortune PPHM experienced with clinical trials did not start or stop with the mislabeling debacle in the P2 Bavi NSCLC trial last September, but instead in the decision to pair Bavi with chemotherapy for initial trials, and not with irradiation therapy. This decision was due to another strategic error: to pursue the observation that Bavi is (weakly) IMMUNOGENIC. Our warhorse Bavi! originally a state of the art MAB missile delivery system with an exclusive docking site on cancer cell membranes. That was exciting. Now "naked" Bavi is charged with doing battle against established cancers, some of them enormous, and without a payload. After a very promising lung cancer trial combining Bavi with "chemotherapy", Bavi is now being tried in combination with still "weaker sisters", or "down-stream immunomodulators". A dud by any other name is still an immunomodulator. Does anyone think upstream and downstream immunomodulators are going to eliminate large cancer masses? Those incurable by all other conceivable modalities? The role of these agents is in very early cancers, those too small to be detected by current clinical screening tests. So battle-axe missile Cotara, enormous and outdated in design, sinks deeper into mothballs and silence. Carrying I131 to cancer cells, and bombing the necrotic cancer core is sensible. Mothballing Cotara-MAB is not. Meanwhile, silence in world literature from China about its experience with Cotara and lung cancer. No good news. No bad news. No news. Strange. Why won't the Chinese publish, "It does/doesn') work. Communications lines jammed. Blackouts on news. Not strange to anyone else? No explanation demanded. None required. Cotara, one of the most efficacious agents used to date against glioblastoma multiforme is back-burnered. But of course one of the problems with the brain cancer trial and Cotara is that we did not run a control group of I131 only delivered into the GBM tumor mass with the special delivery catheter. That is, who needs the cotara when you have the catheter. And back to Bavi: the idea is to humanize it and add a payload. Where are we with that project? Anything new out of Affitec? Russia? Anyone?
cj, thanks for info on Steve DeMattos presentation, the Senior Director, Clinical Research, PPHM. In light of last year's clinical trial snafu, the title, "Investigating Results from Piloting a Team-Based Approach to Vendor Management for a Global Multi-Site Trial to Ensure Efficient Trial Control” brings to mind first the word, "oxymoronic". However, DeMattos has an inspired CV which includes stints with • Geron - Executive Director, Oncology Program Mgt (5 years 7 mos.)
• PDL Biopharma - Senior Director, Head of Program Mgt, Program & Portfolio Mgt (1 year 1 mo.
• Allergan - Sr Director, Head of Project Mgt, Program & Portfolio Mgt (1 year)
• Johnson & Johnson - Director Program Mgt. (1 year)
• Amgen - Global Program Manager (3 years).
Next is PPHM's CEO SK presenting, "Secrets of the deal".
sunstar, north40k, et.al, I always assumed this was simply computerized MM activity to give the appearance of activity when there is, in fact, none. Happy thanksgiving to all you who provide the info and entertainment here! doc
great stuff dia, thanks. It's the worst kind of luck that PPHM began clinical trials with chemo rather than irradiation, and we would be rolling in clover by now. cheers!
4OurRetirement, the point is not whether China is using a slightly different Cotara. The point is there has been absolutely Zippo in the world literature about the Chinese experience with it after almost 10 years of being approved there for lung cancer. That was a part of the tech "give-away" to China deal, that the world would learn something because of it, and speed commercialization here. Instead, total silence. I wrote that I find it peculiar that nobody on this board or in the company has ever commented on this China phenomenon. If Cotara has efficacy in cancer treatment, other than if it is delivered through a special catheter threaded into the substance of a brain cancer, we should know it (unequivocably) by now. Comments anyone?
dia, north40k ask if any here are aware of a "scientist" who has written about the positive outlook for Bavituximab (or Cotara). I too have often wondered why PPHM pipeline products are never mentioned in papers and presentations on the subject. I just searched PubMed database, and the only "neutral" mention of Bavi was (unfortunately) on possible new pancreatic cancer treatment strategies. That said, I do not think the absence of literature kudos at this stage is necessarily a bad thing, but it does speak to the equivocal results and small scale trials to date. Once PIII trials commence another larger wave of public and scientific scrutiny will occur, and there are not many new therapeutic agents that have had equally extensive preclinical MOA/safety studies which attest to the logic of Bavi.
mrpatinmn, I keep asking if anyone here is mystified
by Cotara approved in China for 10 years, and not one
word on efficacy...or lack threof. Never an answer from
the board. Even more mysterious.
microbe_man, I have re-read all your learned contributions posted in the last two months, and appreciate your incisive point of view. You are obviously a well-trained scientist, and skepticism is a trait any cautious investigator must have in abundance. I agree that the recent report of CTL-4/Bavi combo in mice should not have been reported in detail other than to say "recent studies are encouraging", or similar. However, as you know, the effect of any agent in lower animals is always suspect when trying to extrapolate them to humans, and we are still left with the impressive reports of Bavi safety and efficacy when used in advanced human lung cancer. In addition to the PIII study of Bavi with advanced lung cancer, which definitely needs to be done, there is Thorpe's elegant work which lays the groundwork for the very rational look at Bavi for human imaging. I have maintained for years that Bavi- cannot cure advanced cancers because of tumor bulk, etc., but might well have a role in preventing metastases and, more important, recurrences after debulking surgical and chemo-irradiation therapy, and also as adjuvant treatment during irradiation therapy. I have also maintained for years that was a necessity created by dire financial straits that dictated PPHM's move to combine Bavi- with chemo rather than with irradiation therapy or surgery. This post is growing too long to extoll the possibilities of the anti-PS platform in chronic inflammatory conditions, Alzheimers, infections, and auto-immune disease, and the possibilities of humanize Bavi armed with small-molecule cytotoxic agents. PPHM has a gold mine here in the anti-PS platform, and at present is continuing to assay various "veins" in that goldmine to determine which will be most productive. The PII human lung cancer trial was a stroke of good luck which shows safety and promise of efficacy. Period. You are right about the mice. This is beginning to remind me of the pioneering days of the cochlear implant for deafness when we had humans hearing with the implant and the acknowledged experts in auditory theory arguing for animal trials. Let's keep our eyes on the goal-line.