Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

AMRN—…the Forbes guy [Matt Herper] is *really* digging to find reasons to doubt the result but not doing any digging whatsoever to see what measures were taken to address these issues… I also find it a little disturbing that he is presenting a trivial increase in LDL-C in the placebo arm as something to be highly concerned about.

I’ll concede that there may be modest bias against REDUCE-IT among some of the top biotech people I follow on Twitter insofar as few, if any, of them predicted success. The former head of R&D for a Big Pharma (and someone I follow on Twitter) told me this in August:

I have no real scientific evidence, just observations over the years. Getting a positive CVOT result is a big hurdle. Fish oil to date has been uninspiring. Niacin (which admittedly has multiple effects) also doesn't have a CVOT benefit. Would a high dose "super fish oil" suddenly work? Maybe. But I wouldn't bet on it.

However, I wouldn’t knock Matt Herper, who is one of the best biotech beat writers. Matt doesn’t scrutinize technical papers on his own; rather, he calls experts in the field for comment, as he did in this instance. Some of the posters on the AMRN iHub board are going wacko with their accusations against Matt and others.