There is certainly a sell on the news aspect here, but there is also the "deaths" as the headline, the Bayer drug as a headline, and this overwhelms what was already known and that is the bone scans, for which I was hoping to receive definitive information that they were everything we might hope. Instead, there is still some ambiguity there. This said, the drug is still looking "unprecedented" in its effect on the bone. What is less is clear is exactly what this means regulatory and market size wise.
I am surprised the share price did not rise more upon the prostate data release, but maybe that was already known and it was the other complicating factors that were not known.
All in all, 15-20% is just a day in the market for a biotech like this. What will be important is to see if the share price holds here or starts the day by day decline.
One thing I would like better input on is the definition of "pain reduction" and less use of narcotic pain drugs. These are proxies for the drug really working, and working well, but there is nothing but adjectives provided in the press release to put a magnitude on these figures. These end points are difficult to assess in and of themselves, but I would like to have some way to guage the magnitude of the effect that is being seen.
Phase III will be somewhat risky as EXEL really would not appear to have the dosage issue resolved, and that seems to be a clear issue to be worked out. However, even in a small cohort we are seeing some very statisfically significant disease progression numbers. There is a lot of positive here in the bone data, which surprises me that the rest of the data on soft tissues is otherwise underwhelming. But the bone issue is a clear unmet need, and this will be a significant medical advance in that indication if the data holds up clinically in phase III. There is clearly something unprecedented going on here.
Anyone disagree with this?
Tinker
AI
