Presently, only for biostatisticians.
For anyone new coming to this message board to learn about Anavex Life Science Corp and its new drug candidates (blarcamesine, et al.), when reading through the majority of postings in the last week or more, you will be very frustrated.
Several years ago, the big question was whether or not the Anavex drug, Anavex 2-73 (now, “blarcamesine”) could possibly treat Alzheimer’s. Early clinical data showed both safety and efficacy, but since Alzheimer’s is so thoroughly recalcitrant (resistant to any treatment), the great question revolved around the drug’s mechanism of action (MOA); exactly, biochemically, how could it work its magic. How, possibly, could it work to yield positive therapeutic outcomes? On a molecular basis, what, if anything, was happening?
For several years the mechanism of action was the big question being discussed on this message board. Lots of “experts” laid out detailed reasons just why the molecule couldn’t possibly work any cellular fixes for neurons with Alzheimer’s. At the same time, other experts, with in vivo and in vitro evidence (in animals and cell cultures) showed that, indeed, by its unique activation of the sigma-1 receptor protein, all sorts of favorable, downstream reaction cascades happened, thereby restoring cellular homeostatic processes, etc.
If you wish, search back through all of the hundreds of postings in the last year or so, and you will no longer find any trying to prove that blarcamesine’s MOA is deficient. By now, the molecule’s remarkable abilities to fix various pathologies in neurons is uncontested. The drug works, safely and effectively. But now, to what extent?
Presently, the contentions focus on the statistics produced in human clinical trials of blarcamesine. It is contended that the biostatistics publicly released from the trials are not complete, so the actual safety and effectiveness of blarcamesine can’t yet be known.
Right now, to understand and participate in the message board’s current discussions one must have taken (and passed) and understood all that was in a college biostatistics course. Since very few retail stock investors have statistics competency, the current postings will provide little upon which the taking of an AVXL position can be decided.
By whatever means, sooner or later, the matter will be settled. Let’s see how.
