FOLD:

AVEO CC tomorrow 8:30 AM EST, presumably to reveal tivozanib Phase 3 data vs. Nexavar.



http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AVEO-Pharmaceuticals-Inc-bw-2393677870.html?x=0

Thanks very much to you and NP1986. Interesting studies.

Thanks. I agree that one would expect a PPI to prevent aspirin-induced ulceration in theory (even without antibiotics), but there's nothing in the prescribing information for Prilosec indicating that this phenomenon has been observed. It's always comforting to see experiments/clinical trials confirm "theory".

General question for the board regarding POZN's PA-32540.

I'm tossing around the idea of buying some POZN.

For those who don't know, POZN is testing PA-32540 in a couple of Phase 3 trials. PA-32540 is basically aspirin combined with fast-release omeprazole (Prilosec).

The thesis is that patients who are at-risk for aspirin-associated peptic/duodenal ulcers may be less likely to develop them if you combine the aspirin with a proton-pump inhibitor.

My question is, does anyone know of any evidence to support the notion that proton-pump inhibitors will actually prevent ulceration as a monotherapy? I know there is some evidence for this when PPIs are combined with antibiotics like clarithromycin, but I can't find anything when PPIs are used alone. I can understand how PPIs might have this prophylactic effect in theory, but I know of no empirical evidence.

Anyway, I'm curious to know if anyone knows of any studies or has any thoughts on the subject.

Thanks.

see here: http://www.ptjournal.com/ptjournal/fulltext/29/8/PTJ2908510.pdf

and here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16982296

and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linezolid

edit: price is generally > $1,000

edit # 2: quote from 1st reference:
An average course of treatment with oral linezolid (12
days) cost $1,548, which included the charges of medication,
physician visits, and laboratory monitoring. This therapy
resulted in average daily charges of $129. Vancomycin 1 g
every 12 hours was the most commonly prescribed parenteral
antibiotic in these patients, with daily charges of $417 in our
infusion center.

Aside from dosing, what advantages do you think it has?

WallStArb,

What happened to financialchat.com (in particular, the biotech cash worksheet)?

Site seems to be dead.

Hi Dew,

I've done a little consulting recently, but nothing "full-time".

As you probably surmised, I scrapped the clinicaltrials search engine. I still have the drug adverse events search engine up and running, which is where the consulting derives from.

Just coming out of hibernation. I'll be actively lurking and chiming in when I feel like I can contribute in a substantive way.

Hope you are well.

Paul

Dew,

hope you are well...

i'm not in the biotech world right now.

you'll get a kick out of both of the comments below.

currently, i'm trying to develop apps for the iphone and android platforms (like every other out of work programmer in the universe)...i'll give it 6 months.

my most recent 2 stock stories?

GTCB: took my lumps and moved on. 60% loss

more recently, I bought ford (F) @ 2. So far, that one's looking good, but it could hardly be called biotech unless Willie Nelson gets on the BOD.

-best

Sorry for the delayed response. I was recently laid off from a small biotech company in CT and now I have all sorts of free time on my hands...

As for elaboration of the differences between advanced searches using clinicaltrials.gov (heretofore abbreviated ct.gov) and advanced searches of clinical trials using fdable.com (heretofore abbreviated fd.com)...

here are the differences as they currently stand (both have their +s and -s).

"Search Terms" in ct.gov doesn't search all datafields for search terms. I forget which ones it does search for, but fd.com searches all that are publicly available.

ct.gov lets you filter for trials that have published results. fd.com does not (yet).

ct.gov doesn't let you filter by an assortment of trial statuses. fd.com does. (e.g. you can't use ct.gov to say, "I want trials that are "not yet recruiting"

the same holds true for filtering by study type. ct.gov only lets you filter by one study type at a time (e.g. expanded access). fd.com lets you filter by multiple study types (e.g., "I want clin trials that are either observational or interventional or expanded access")

ct.gov lets you filter by trial location. fd.com does not (yet).


ct.gov gives you a general filter of who's funding the study (e.g., industry or academia or the government, etc.). fd.com does not

ct.gov allows you to filter results by whether safety is one of the outcome measures. fd.com does not (yet).

ct.gov does NOT let you filter by the # of people enrolled in the trial. fd.com does.

ct.gov lets you filter by when the clinical trial information was *first* provided to ct.gov. fd.com does not.

ct.gov does NOT let you filter by the projected start and end dates of the trial. fd.com does.

that's all i can think of right now.



***if anyone knows of a job opening that pays roughly $2.5 million per year and is located in central Connecticut, and requires little to no effort and much joy, i'd love to hear about it and point out how immensely qualified I am.***

-best

Hey, long time no speak...Hi Biowatch, Dew, ThomasS et al.

Hope you are well!

ThomasS, you might be interested in my clinical trial search engine (e.g. here's a search for the quash trials: http://www.fdable.com/clinical_trials/query/649467ce50da). It's quite similar to clinicaltrials.gov, but the advanced search features are a little different, and more suitable for certain queries.

XOXOXOXO

-tba

thanks for the plug!

I'm stunned that you still believe in SNTA.


sorry. couldn't resist.
as you were...

Len,

"Where did you get that information? Did you calculate it yourself? If so, why?"

Where? From my personal data-store of yahoo messages.
Yes, I did it myself. My web-site harvests yahoo messages and allows them to be searched, so it was a relatively easy calculation.

specifically, the calculation required a single SQL query (see below). If you don't know what SQL is, it's a language for extracting data from relational databases:

**select count(message_number), dayofyear(message_date) from messages where year(message_date) = 2006
group by dayofyear(message_date)**

for what it's worth, my database is now open to the public:

database type: MySQL
hostname: www.busyant.com
username: open_user
password: yahoo
schema: yahoomessages
privs: select ONLY. you can see/download the data, but you can't modify it.

if you use it, please keep other users in mind and only grab ~ 25,000 results in any single query.

there are ~ 130 boards present. all of them contain message-titles and authornames. MANY of them also contain full message-text.

advantages over yahoo search: you can query and group the data as you see fit (e.g. you can determine # of posts per day for the year 2006). You can do wild-card searches, etc. etc.

disadvantages: not all boards covered. You need to know SQL.

OT: yahoo messages, then and now.

I thought some people might have morbid curiosity in how the new yahoo message format has affected the # of messages posted.
Below is a graph of the # of messages posted on ~ 120 message boards as a function of day for 2006. the last data-point is yesterday.

It looks like they've seen a > 2-fold reduction in the # messages. Be interesting to see when/if they recover.
To find the # of informative posts per day, divide by 1000.

Also, You don't need to do a fourier transform to find the period: it's 7 days

gofish, depending on the board you're searching, try www.busyant.com

"BusyAnt: I can’t tell from your recent post whether you are still in this issue. Are you?]"

No. I took my lumps and have moved on.

My only holdings of significance to people here are currently:

ICOS--you know that song "1 step forward, 2 steps back"? Icos is like 1.998 steps forward 2 steps back. I thought the ED market would do better than what has transpired.

GTCB--my most significant biotech holding. You hold ~1% of the company. I hold ~ 0.1% of the company.

Dew,

What's your cost basis on GTCB?

I'm not sure if that question is gauche, but since you've divulged that you own or control ~ 1% of the company (pre-recent-financing),
I figure this is probably an acceptable ? in polite company.

Are you under water, or were you one of the crazies who purchased in the $1 range?

Also, I believe that you once indicated (around the time of the + opinion) that you owned or controlled 1% of GTCB.
Since you are a man of precise wording, is there any nuance associated with your phrasing ? i.e. why not just say "own ~1%"?

grazie.

fwiw, I sold for a minor profit prior to the decision earlier this year and I've been buying in the 1.18-1.26 range. Hopefully I won't have QLTIed you.

I pretty much agree with everything Dew said.

I think the format change on YMB was in large part a reaction to the release "google finance" earlier this year, but it looks like Yahoo has also intentionally "throttled" high volume boards like ELN because it's just not sound use of their re$ources.

As dew noted, the old message-URLs are backward-compatible in an effort to not break any external links--so that's still working at the moment.

Yes, I'm also looking into some type of "forward" compatibility w/ busyant (my 'harvesting robot' stopped functioning on Friday night), but I have other more pressing issues (pregnant wife, 30 weeks w/ contractions on bed rest and a 2 year old son who is none too pleased that he can no longer jump on his mom). all are currently asleep so I'm getting about 20 minutes of productivity / night before I fall asleep.


**Also, check out the RSS feed for individual boards. This seems to list messages in chronological order and can be used reasonably well w/ low-volume boards like GTCB (not ELN tho).**


Best.

-tba

OT] World Cup

Probability of Winning Cup
Brazil 27%
Germany 16%
Argentina xxxxx16%xxxxx 0%
Italy 13%
England 11%
France 9%
Portugal 6%
Ukraine 2%

guilty as charged.

I'm a Connecticut Swedish Gypsy - in Bea Arthur's Court.

terry,

this is sort of how my thought process goes w/r/t some of dew’s picks.

gtcb: I agree that it was/is super cheap. there was/is a regulatory risk to its antithrombin program, but there was minimal efficacy risk. This was a risk that I was willing to take based on the valuation of the company.

adh: the 2 most advanced programs are almost all efficacy risk, which to me is far more substantial than the regulatory risk associated with gtcb. the “anti” cadherin approach? everyone has a favorite protein target. I don’t see anything special about cadherin that makes it a target that stands out as a no-brainer in the expected efficacy department. Also, as others have noted, cadherins are expressed on normal tissue as well, which might raise some toxicity flags. I’m sure the animal models for their show good results, but anti-cancer animal models are often poor predictors of clinical efficacy.
Eniluracil?
here is a quote from the adh web-site: “GSK’s clinical development program for the combination of 5-FU and eniluracil met with success in early development. However, three Phase III trials undertaken by GSK failed and development was stopped.”
4th time’s the charm? good luck playing around w/ the dosing.

imho, adh falls into the “genr” category of dew’s picks. he may correct me if I am misrepresenting his rationale, but I think it’s based more on the market cap being out of whack with their stages of product development, but I think their potential products are weak and potentially suspect (similar to genr’s amd drug).

that’s not to say that adh won’t go up or that it’s market cap *isn’t* out of whack, but it just seems like the kind of risk that I wouldn’t want to take.

then again, I was a qlti shareholder back in the day…so who’s the fool now?

ADH?

At some level, I think you've lost your mind. However, these things seem to work out for you (c.f. GENR), so what do I know.
Too much risk for my tastes, no matter how "good" the valuation seems. The whole cadherin business seems like yet another shot in the dark to me. And the fancy uracil analog? Cross your fingers...

BTW, Not that this has any major relevance within the article you posted, but Mal Steinberg never won the Nobel Prize. He's a bit of a huckster (MHO).

tease? my guess is that his hand is tipped in #21355.

LA,

Mex City,

Sao Paolo.

It says so when you save the pictures!!

Merry New Year.

dew, biowatch just contacted me and I see by your post that you (and probably others) are having problems w/ the site.

Can you tell me what browser you're using?

I tested the site out w/ IE6 and Firefox (granted the site goes to pieces in Firefox when you increase the fonts, so if that's the problem, I'll have it fixed in the next day or 2).

Anyone else who's having problems, feel free to notify me.

-tba