@MS You didn't ask me but...
My degree says 'doctor' - not MD. But in medicine. If I say too much I can get kicked off the trials I'm currently helping with. I already had to sign a document stating I didn't own more than $__,___ of A____ ____ stock (which I do not) or I'd have been forced off that study too.
To your question, is there enough evidence in the Topline data for Ifenprodil for Covid-19? Well, there was going to be. For the one & only result that showed p </= 0.05, which was Time in ICU, Algernon wrote a poison pill into their own result by cautioning 'confounding variable found'. As I speed-read the Topline, all the references to 'needed to sufficiently power' made my Greed/Fear meter slam over to Fear. Then I spotted the p=0.0315 (Yay!!), then they crushed my flickering hopes.
When AGN states the numbers of participants needed in a Phase 3 to find Significance, it's running the math backwards from the 50/50/50 arm participants and the p-value found so far to come up with enough MORE participants at similar data trends to find p less than 5% or 1-out-of-20 odds that the findings are the result of random chance. This is the commonly accepted standard (for good reason) of statistical significance in FDA drug trials.
You can bitch & moan if you like but it's similar to the hot Tech company quoting non-GAAP earnings while big banks continue to downgrade the firm for showing a loss using GAAP accounting. You're not going to change the FDA's (or the big bank's) mind on what standard to use. Whining so just makes AGN apologists look like the Denial-inflicted bagholders on message boards for RLFTF, HGEN, and especially CYDY. We gambled, we crapped out.
I sold 5/6 of my position yesterday at a 35% loss. The remaining 1/6 will pay back all my cost basis if AGN ever hits $1 US. Not holding my breath. It's not the drug's fault, it's just really difficult to find any significance with 50 patients in a study arm on this particular disease.
Maybe AGN can sell Mark's ifenprodil patents but as far as your dream (and mine) of an outright company buy-out, I doubt it. Kal and his cast of con men will not look like a bright shiny prize to anyone at the scale of GSK or Pfizer. Peace, out.
