Biotech Values

[apljack]

PWRM: I used to track Power 3 medical because they had entered into an agreement with Neogenomics (NGNM) to allow NGNM acquire up to 40% of PWRM if there was enough development of their proteomics tests to generate a marketable product. NGNM backed out a couple of quarters ago, saying that NGNM's interest in the PWRM Breast Ca. proteomics tests was not as far enough along and that PWRM was pursuing their Nueodignostic tests for Parkinson's Dz and Alzheimers more agressively (which NGNM had little interest in).

PWRM's initial results of the Sensitivity and Specificity of their Parkinson's diagnostic test seems reasonable, but the devil is in the details: The sample size is low, the patients already have the identified disease, and the co. continues to report that the Sens/Spec was achieved through two different scoring methods (a similar potential weakness that I saw with their Breast Ca. diagnostics in a prior announcement.)

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Power3-Medical-Announces-iw-15276277.html

There are very high barriers to producing the type of study necessary to validate PWRM's diagnostic tests including the time involved in following patients who are truly asymptomatic (which may take years before the test can be validated) and the number of patients required for such screening. Their breast Ca. diagnostic had a Sens/Spec only in the 88%/89% range, if memory serves and I stopped following when these numbers came out because I thought that they were too far away from a suite of diagnostics that would actually end up in a clinical lab.

Ira Goldknopf has good science, but the execution of his vision is flagging because of lack of money and results that are not quite as sensitive as the indistry would like, at least for breast ca.

regards,

aj