No, I don’t feel conned. I’ve been reading and studying what NWBO has been doing for over 19 years. I’ve been invested for almost 11 years. I didn’t get into the investment until I saw they were moving along enough in the trials that I felt they were going to pull this off. I also started to comprehend as the clinical hold news came out and what occurred afterward was more a problem with the suddenly and rapidly evolving aspects of how immune therapy data was going to be interpreted. Things were occurring that were confounding and everyone in the field was caught off guard wondering, in blinded trials, what the hell was happening. IMUC was the first to throw in the towel. They didn’t get it. Dr. Liau and Dr. Bosch did. They perhaps weren’t sure what it was they were seeing. I think Direct helped them in this regard and opened up a window as the door seemed to be shutting.
As an investigator, and one that is highly regarded in the field, when you have a perplexing situation in front of you that is evolving rapidly you have to confront the different aspects of that problem: why is this happening? What is it precisely thats’ happening? How do we address figuring this out? What am I going to do next, and then next, and then next, all while being so curious and fascinated (and doing your normal surgical work, teaching, administrative tasks). This is what the scientists were feeling. The business had more practical matters to address...oh shit! our shareholders are freaking out! What do we tell them when we’re not sure what we’re dealing with? Everyone had to calm down, shut up, and start to figure out how to deal with what they were finding. On top of that it was appearing that they were sitting on some astounding survival findings but the PFS may have been putting a fly in the ointment. Instinct are telling you there’s good stuff here. But how do we tease it out? (As an aside, and one to illustrate how things go in the hot seat while others are oblivious: Captain Sully, when hit with a bird strike, didn’t tell the passengers on his plane that they were in a bad situation until they were about to hit the Hudson River. The only words he uttered to the passengers was “This is the Captain, brace for impact” just before ditching in the Hudson River. He was fixated on solving the dilemma and couldn’t afford to waste time and thought making the passengers feel things would be fine. I had a friend and his family on that flight and he never understood completely until Captain Sullivan said what he said that they were indeed going to crash. He said it made the entire situation much less harrowing.)
So now you have scientists, intrigued and fascinated, yet confounded, trying to collectively put their minds around something that they weren’t sure how to deal with immediately. And you had the business being shorted into oblivion. And no one could say why or what they were going to do. If you were big Pharma you’d just say hey, we’ve got some interesting stuff going on. But they don’t do that because they’re in the business of buying up start ups with something on the brink and bringing it to fruition with their large capital and legions of executives and managers to bring it to market. Their existence does not dangle from a hair if they run into a problem that may be ironically something that could either be the biggest breakthrough in medicine in a century or bring them to their knees for lack of the tools to fend off the hysteria of their investors demanding answers.
I can guarantee you Dr. Liau was more than likely in a state of awe at what was happening and began work in earnest, along with Dr. Bosch, to figure out quickly how to interpret what was happening, come up with a plan to reevaluate the situation, and then come up with a process or processes going forward all the while reacting to a continuing stream of what I believe to be nice surprises. Nice from a science view may not have been real nice from a business perspective however. Dr. Liau and Dr. Prinz appeared to be working on finding ways to identify factors that might add insight to which patients might be the benefactors of DCVax. That did not happen for no reason; they were working hard with what I believe to be incredible foresight because they were starting to see the bigger picture.
As an Emergency Physician I can tell you straight up that it’s the moments when something sideswipes you, knocks you sideways unexpectedly, and forces you to reach into your mind and skills to make all the right moves to keep a patient from dying in front of you. Anyone who’s involved in high stakes issues thrives on these challenges and will work endlessly to not fail because we know we can pull it off. I believe this is exactly what was starting to happen in 2015.
To me this is NWBO. They got knocked with a punch they never expected, tripped, slipped, skidded, wondered, wandered, and righted themselves. They have a solid plan in my perspective, and I think they know they’re on the final front of what will prove this technology works. No one, and I mean no one, could understand this kind of thing if they’ve never found themselves in a life or death type of situation where so much was riding on performance. I know it doesn’t look pretty business wise, but I think in a few years, long after the success of DCVax, we’ll look back and find that the scientists, backed by the company, were able to realize that their first instincts were indeed true and will have proved to pull off the biggest advance in medicine in 50 years, if not ever.
