Underestimate Linda Powers at your own peril. This is personal for her, as it is with many of those associated with Northwest Bio, who have all lost loved ones to cancer. She has been entrusted to see that the esteemed Dr. Liau’s elegant creation receives the recognition it deserves, and becomes part of the new standard of care for not only the treatment of GBM, but many other cancers. Linda is well aware that there are thousands of cancer patients who are literally dying to be treated with DCVax and who are depending on her to get this treatment to market. History is littered with hundreds of failed trials in GBM, and the odds of success are next to impossible. She has met and overcome every challenge to date, and has done everything possible to keep the lights on, and the trial going, until the final results, and full potential of this treatment can be understood and presented. In the face of overwhelming odds, and relentless attacks, many people would have caved under this pressure, but not Linda. She has persevered, and this has likely only hardened her resolve and determination.
There has been a lot of management bashing on this board, and some of it may be justified. No, they haven’t been perfect. But walk a mile in their shoes, and then you can speak. Many of these message-board pundits have been calling tor the unblinding of this trial for years, but yet, Linda waited. In an underpowered study, this wait allowed all the data on all the patients to be collected, improving the odds of success. It also allowed time for the regulatory authorities to write new rules for cell and gene therapies and create more paths for approval, and it allowed long-term survival data to develop for insurance coverage.
This is the most critical time for this trial, and Linda and Northwest Bio have been through too much and have too much riding on the results to allow success to be taken from them at this time, and she is doing everything possible to ensure that mistakes are not made, and that the data is analyze and presented in a way that maximizes the potential for success. I can’t ask for much more than that.
