JRlll,
Steve has every right to publish his views from a negative perspective. If someone doubts that anything a company does can have a positive reason for being done then that is their bias and Steve makes it clear that this is his bias by what he said by opinion about the company not sharing top line by now after the late breaking abstract was submitted and accepted. He said this based on his assumption that Dr. Linda Liau and Dr. Marnix Bosch have been unblinded by their roles with regard to data. While this may be true, there are also good reasons for not unblinding the company now or putting a positive spin on an abstract title before top line results are known by the public but those are not discussed by Steve. Hence the bias becomes obvious because an opinion was given without presenting another perspective. This is his choice and his style now so it’s up to others to counter if they so choose. The one point I will make about his comments regarding titles at the SNO conference is that DCVax-L is known to be synergistic with checkpoint inhibitors so talking about combo possibilities makes perfect sense as it relates to a clinically discovered value of this treatment. The topic is neutral to bullish if comments from Mr. Roger Perlmutter and others about combos with vaccines are to be taken seriously.
The foundational flaw in Steve’s analysis, though, is the assumption of failure to meet PFS in 2015 when 17 SOC/placebo patients were deliberately kept out of this trial. This is a flawed assumption based only on opinion and not any specific evidence. Trying to read into appearances of abstract titles might be considered dangerous by some who know this company has been under attack for quite some time. There comes a time to settle a score and the two Linda’s are far from being enemies or at odds with one another as Steve would suggest by his comments indicating that Dr. Linda Liau and Linda Powers are not on the same page with regard to timing of discussion about the data. Until formal validation there is always a chance for disappointment. Steve likes to point that out more than look at the positives. You know, like the 17 missing SOC/placebo patients. Best wishes.
