The key to tomorrow's Cotara news will be seen not in the PR but in data in the Poster that hopefully will be added to the website at the same time the PR goes out. Hopefully the Poster will show the survival waterfall chart as compared with SOC.
If our survival line in the Poster chart has lots of space above and to the right of the SOC line, then the good times for the pps have arrived-- or nearly arrived. Space above the SOC line means a better MOS (Median Overall Survival). Space to the right of the SOC line is equally important because it shows that at a given point in time like 18 months after treatment, for example 35% of Cotara patients may still be alive but only 3% or zero percent of SOC patients are still alive at that date. Such a survival fact is just as important as the more traditional MOS figure and the FDA will surely take note if we have lots of space to the right of the SOC line.
From looking at historical Cotara data, the "space to the right" success of Cotara seems to be it's strong suit. In other words, for whatever reason, we beat beat the MOS for SOC by a significant margin, but the really dramatic news is that there seems to be in every trial about a third of the patients who outlive SOC by leaps and bounds.
I'm not predicting the stock will jump tomorrow, but if there is lots of space above and to the right of the SOC line, this means analysts and the funds they work for will be able to figure out that the FDA is going to give us an easy Phase III registration path-- perhaps only 100 more patients in the Cotara arm and 100 in the control arm.
The more space above and to the right of the SOC line, the less risk for our BP partner, the sooner the bidding starts, and the higher the price that PPHM will be able to command for a regional or global Cotara license.
Once that upfront license payment arrives, which could be $50 to $150 million (depending on whether is a regional or global license), the ATM selling stops and we're off to the races. The actual Cotara license may not be announced until late 2011 or early 2012, but the anticipation of this license event and what it means for the Company will start tomorrow and grow steadily over the summer and fall.
