Biotech Values

[iwfal]

CSLN -

I don't get this contention [that the patients in the CSLN trial are healthier than in most HCC trials]

I had just done a quick google of hcc randomized pfs - and the survival is, in fact, generally a lot less than the pfs seen in the CSLN trial. But the patients are also generally a lot sicker - e.g. mets outside the liver.

Can I prove that the paper was comparing to inappropriate comparator trials - no (they provided no cites). But it was a good bet since none of the trials that popped up look like so healthy a patient population as in the CSLN trial.

Note: tonight I found a more appropriate comparator trial - which I still have not fully vetted regarding degree of similarity. (and probably never will - too much time, not enough reward, to vet all these random no-name trials). Median PFS of somewhere around 3 to 4 years - so the CSLN trial is not going long yet (or probably ever).

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0748798309002303

Didn't you just come close to defining the difference between hepatocellular carcinoma vs. liver cancer that has resulted from mets from another area (e.g. colorectal)

Don't understand your point - but note that generally on this board (or in a doctors office) if you see a reference to "liver cancer" it is very unlikely that it is a reference to mets in the liver from a non-liver cancer.

given that we're talking large tumors here, what gives you the confidence that overall median PFS will be super high?

The PFS of the CSLN trial is, without doubt, very high - as you can tell from doing a simple model of their enrollment vs time and knowing the trigger number for the interim pfs look (190 events). If the blended pfs were, for instance, only 23 or 24 months they would have already hit the trigger.