Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

INCY:

The individual ORRs across these tumors range from 33% to 39%, so there isn't a huge variance across the cohorts.

But there is visible variance!

Check out the SCCHN results from the pembro doublet versus the nivo doublet. Granted not the same backbone, but pretty close and at least in the same indication. One had an ORR of 34% and the other 23%. One appears comfortably ahead of the mono level whereas the other is hovering much closer. Which one is real?

The more data that are presented, the clearer the picture gets. I think your point about it being no big deal / forest for the trees etc... is the incorrect one. If 3 patients is no big deal, then why not provide it? It's only 3 patients. I'm not impressed by their data release at this meeting, and think that it was a borderline waste of time. There was practically no data released at the meeting that we couldn't have read in the abstracts.

I do think there is some gamesmanship going on with respect to the competitors and their desire to tip their hand. BMY released zero NSCLC data, clearly because they chose not to. If these data were absolute and verifiable garbage, I do think they would have just released it rather than keep it under wraps. Plus, they've indicated a phase 3 is being planned, so there are some data there to be looked at and weighed.

But none of this absolves INCY (and MRK, but no one will blame them) from how they approached this, especially not their silly "consistency" answer. If they'd just said "NSCLC is competitive, and our partner believes additional data release tips off competitors to high performing cohorts" then it could have made more sense.