Biotech Values

[mcbio]

HEC Pharma/(ASMB) -

ASMB hits 14-month low—perhaps related to ABUS sell-off today.

Well, I thought I found a plausible explanation to account for the recent ASMB weakness. I'm not sure when this was initially posted and the results could well have been leaked before but Chinese company HEC Pharma posted preliminary data from a Phase 2a trial of their CpAM for HBV. (I wasn't aware of this company and that they were developing a similar drug to what ASMB doing and in fact a bit further ahead.)

See: https://plan.core-apps.com/tristar_aasld18/abstract/1cd464b79336d9176dd9c2472ad46556 .

Anyways, the data is preliminary data from a 48-week trial and as you can see the median duration of treatment reported in this abstract is 28 weeks. Bottom line: there doesn't seem to be a strong drop in HBsAg. However, I circled back to the prior ASMB R&D Day notes I posted (#msg-141749551 ) and, as you can see, ASMB stated that the Phase 2 trial for their CpAM will be powered to show a .5 log decline in s-antigen at end of 6 months and they hope to see that level of decline or even better. Well, the HEC data doesn't appear too far off from that level at median treatment duration of 28 weeks so I don't think this data busts the CpAM hypothesis. I don't think ASMB would put out that figure for a Phase 2 data point for s-antigen decline if they didn't consider it to be meaningful. Of course, I don't think we know the true level of decline in s-antigen we need to see at 6 months that would point the way to a functional cure.