Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

The XL184 program has more than its share of red flags, IMO. I found the giddiness on EXEL’s recent webcasts off-putting, and I question the degree to which supposedly independent clinicians participated in these investor-oriented events.

I previously commented on the deficiencies of the RDT design, which is essentially a brute-force way to enrich a clinical trial when a company doesn’t know how to find a biomarker.

All told, EXEL strikes me as a company that’s desperately and prematurely trying to sell XL184 to the investment community as a cancer drug with Avastin-like upside. That could conceivably happen, but the odds are very much against it.