NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[Doktornolittle]

Corrected: I meant Mesenchymal not Methylation (not sure status can be easily determined even from a biopsy)

For years I have been waiting for a statement from an LL type that clarifies whether methylation status can be determined from any patient tissue, or whether it has to come from examining the tumor... and you are right that this was not resolved by LL's statement that it is now a common procedure.

However, I am guessing that the tumor usually has the same methylation character as the rest of the patient tissue/dna so the test can be done with some confidence before / without a biopsy. But even if it takes a tumor biopsy, I think I am hearing that such biopsies are now common.

Not sure that mesenchymal status can be easily determined even from a biopsy, however. If so, why would LL talk about how easy it is now to determine methylation status but not mention easy determination of the 4 subgroups in the same discussion.

As for the heterogeneity of the tumor types... I remain in denial about that. If that were generally true then there would be no such thing as the 4 subgroups and no benefit to trying to specify a given treatment for a given subgroup. There may be heterogeneity given there are reportedly scores if not hundreds of mutations for each tumor, but I do not want to believe, and do not believe, that sufficient genetic heterogeneity to properly be described as mixed subgroups is common.