AVEO—OS was actually slightly better—(HR=0.97)—in the Fotivda arm than in the Nexavar (control) arm. (Median OS was worse in the Fotivda arm, but median values don’t mean much.) The HR for PFS, the primary endpoint, was 0.73, so the HR for OS merely needed to not be awful to get by.
In any event, the main reason for today’s spike in AVEO’s share price (IMO) is that Fotivda’s path to FDA approval was long and tortuous (#msg-152089747), so investors could not take anything for granted.
“The efficient-market hypothesis may be the foremost piece of B.S. ever promulgated in any area of human knowledge!”