Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[falconer66a]

This Is A Contradiction

For a difficult to treat disease with such high failure rate, there is no credibility for a drug which had undergone only 32/25 patients and has inconclusive evidence.

Please tell, if Alzheimer's treatments have a high failure rate (essentially, 100%; no present drug brings on a normal life span, all fail in short periods of time), why, then, were the Australian Anavex 2-73 results not as bad as those from existing drugs?

It's not a comparison of people in each trial; rather, it's a matter of what percentage of trial participants got relief.

There can be only two reasons for the high efficacy rate in the Australian trial: a) per chance (exceptionally high), the trial happened to include patients all of whom atypically retained baseline cognition, or actually had it improve---by chance, not by drug efficacy.

Or, b) Anavex 2-73 actually does have unique mechanisms of action that do restore neuron function.

Out of the thousands of Australian Alzheimer's patients, just what might be the chances of randomly selecting the few who might so uncharacteristically respond so well to the Anavex drug?

Of course, many following this issue will continue to insist that the Australian results simply can't be trusted. Not enough patients were tested. For those potential or current AVXL investors with that perspective, results a year or more from now must be awaited.

Others, however, see the high success percentage in the Australian trial as a very strong indication that similar success percentages will be revealed in the upcoming 1-yr Phase 3 trial of three hundred or so patients.

Personally, I don't think Australian Alzheimer's patients are any different from those in other countries; that high efficacy rate resulted from actual drug efficacy, not random chance.

Let's say, for example, the chances of being a rare Alzheimer's patient that responds well to Anavex 2-73 is 50%. Half of all who would be treated with the drug respond favorably. The other half continue to decline.

What, then, are the chances of selecting 25 positive responders. In the selection of the first patient, it's 50/50. Same for the next, and all of the rest. What, then are the chances of always selecting a high responder?

Flip a coin 25 times. To get the Australian results you've got to flip 25 straight heads. What are the chances of that?

(Ok, all the usuals will come right back and claim the positive results weren't. That's another matter not worth responding to.)