Longfellow,
I'm not sure what part of my post you didn't understand. A checkpoint inhibitor (CI) will likely increase efficacy. They want to partner. They're actually trying to attract discussions with big Pharma companies by showing evidence of DCVax Direct's mechanism of action. Nothing on their slides to state "collaboration negotiations" are in the process. I've seen other biotech's confirm on their slides when contract negotiation are near final. They haven't done that and I believe they would tell us if it were true. Talk of a partnership is speculative at this point.
In my opinion NWBT will need to get their manufacturing costs down in order to make a collaboration attractive. As I wrote last summer, the idea of combining two costly drugs and expecting the regulators to approve without overwhelming efficacious benefit is an unlikely prospect. And unfortunately before testing combinations, no one knows what kind of results they will get, let alone if it will be strong. As such, Big Pharma can partner and test with a peptide vaccines for a more consistence product, still "potentially" get robust efficacy in testing. The cost combination problem is averted. And then if the combination results prove strong, they won't have to worry about lowering the cost of their drugs to seek approval down the road. And I understand that this iHub for the most part believes that DCVax Direct is the vaccine and will produce the better partnering candidate from an "efficacy" standpoint. Even if that ends up being true down the road, it makes more sense for big Pharma to test with a cheaper peptide version (the next best thing) to see what kind of efficacy results they can get from that combo (peptide + CI). The idea is to get a product through clinical testing that can help them make lots of money - to sell the most drugs. Big Pharma will make less on their own CI if they partner with a product that is both tougher to manufacture and has its own high-cost association, which DCVax Direct does. So unless DCVax-L results blows results out of the water (control tested and proven DCVax technology beats out peptide vaccine by a landslide) or DCVax technology manufacturing gets so cheap (to a point where those high cost/difficult to manufacture concerns dissipate) I wouldn't hold your breath over a big Pharma CI collaboration, as it's not advantageous to them to do so. I did recommend a clinical stage CI to them. Hopefully they can explore that avenue if big Pharma isn't interested which again I'm imagining they won't for reasons mentioned above.
For now their Phase II is only being developed as a "mono-therapy" and not as a "combination therapy". My advice to you given their track record, of DCVax Direct "is starting soon" promotion, is to only believe their study is happening when it is actually happening. They've been "in preparation" motion for 1.5 years already, and still no single Phase II, let alone multiple ones they alluded to way back when. It is realistic to assume their Phase II start will be delayed until they confirm otherwise.
GL
AI
Market Data 
Markets 
