Hi rnn256, I agree with your last paragraph, we do need to take some of these guidelines with a grain of salt. If converting a mouse dose to a HED was simple in terms of determining what the anticipated efficacy should be when comparing efficacy in the mouse to humans, there would be would be few drug failures. Obviously that is not the case. The allometric scaling approach has limitations on the types of drug being tested and factors such as how highly protein bound the drug it, biliary vs renal excretion mechanisms and binding sites all come in to play as noted in the Sharma and McNeill paper.
At the end of the day we are placing faith in Dr. Menon's judgment and that's ok with me. He has a wonderful track record and I think his veterinary background also provides him with valuable insight when it comes to drug effects on differing species. My gut feeling tells me he is a driven "lab geek" who has special clinical skills (the lab geek reference is meant as a compliment). Hopefully we will have our confirmation in early 2015 (although another cohort or 2 would be fine with me). In closing perhaps what the underlying tone of this thread is defining what realistic expectations are. Speaking for myself, I cringe when I see some saying Kevetrin will be the cure for Cancer. While I would love to be wrong, I think it more accurately should be said that Kevetrin will cure some of cancer, very big difference but still a fabulous outcome that we all want at the end of the day for those suffering with cancer. I hope my comments today were not viewed as being a doubting Debby or negative in my hopes for Kevetrin. Time to go finish mowing my lawn in between the afternoon showers in FL. BK I hope you faired well in the recent storms in Hawaii, many years ago my sister lived on Oahu and I spent a summer there between by junior and senior years in high school (Rainbow Towers, Waikiki, I won't say how long ago.....) lots of beauty there.
