Marker Therapeutics Inc (MRKR)

[Phantom Lord]

I personally don't have many thoughts on the recent update. The data has been discussed and we got plenty of clarification on the call. My opinion remains the same that Marker will do really well in the long run. This past weekend just gave more credence to that opinion as the data was very promising. What happens day to day in the price action is of no interest to me other than picking the right spot to add to my position should I chose to.

Before I get into the few thoughts I have I just feel the need to point out that Maciste was damn near crucified for asking what people think will happen if the results don't meet peoples' expectations and look what happened. The results were very promising but it seems that a lot of peoples' expectations were a bit to high. That coupled with the short term traders who bailed once we didn't see an immediate spike in SP after data release is what I believe caused this drop. It was said a few times on this board that if data didn't meet peoples' expectations that worst case scenario, most likely, would be a drop back into the $5 range. Well, here we are. Nothing that couldn't have been anticipated. Short term traders don't care about the science nor do they try to understand it. Anyone trying to spin the pancreatic data as negative clearly has an agenda and no basic understanding of science.

There was plenty seen in the data to show that the MultiTAA is working. After three months of chemo you don't usually see a ton of progression and we saw tumor shrinkage. That's from the MultiTAA. We saw stable disease of patients in ARM B who have failed first line therapy. That's the MultiTAA. To touch on the complete response yet again, they are very rare in pancreatic cancer. You would expect to see one in maybe 500 patients. The patient who had the CR was initially on Folfirinox prior to the MultiTAA. So the question I have seen brought up was how do we know if the CR was a result of the Folfirinox, MultiTAA, or both. IIRC there has been only one CR in patients treated solely with Folfirinox. That's over a very long time frame as well. What are the chances the second CR just so happens to be during Marker's trial but has absolutely nothing to do with MultiTAA? My guess is pretty slim odds. Obviously it's not out of the realm of possibility but to think that isn't giving much credit to MultiTAA. I would look at Dr. Smaglo's comments on the call as more evidence. I don't remember word for word but he stated when he observed the CR he was surprised. He spoke with colleagues at Baylor as well as other cancer centers and NONE of them had ever observed a CR. The data was nothing but promising. I am looking forward to what future trial designs will look like and seeing more long term data.

Lastly, I would just like to point out the analysts that were on the call. There were some familiar ones and some new ones. That should be exciting. The more eyes on Marker the better. Below is a list of everyone that asked a question on the call, other than Jackson Harvey from Nomura, in order of ranking on tipranks with links. Disclosure: I can’t speak to the validity of tipranks and how they come to their rankings. This is just to provide a visual. If it interests you they also rank seeking alpha authors under bloggers.

George Farmer – BMO Capital
Ted Tentoff – Piper Jaffray
Chris Marai – Nomura
Tony Butler – Roth Capital
Matthew Biegler – Oppenheimer
Yun Zhong – Janney
Daina Graybosch – SVB Leerink


So, back in May and the beginning of June, before the run to $9, we were trading around this price, roughly $250M MC. Now, we know the initial results on the pancreatic cancer trial and are sitting at that same market cap. That shouldn't make any sense to anyone.