Biotech Values

[turtlepower]

I don't get the love for ECYT. Sure, there was a nice chunk of insider buying after the large drop and, while that's nice to see, sometimes that's just Fool's Gold. More important to me is the fact that while their recent Phase 2b ovarian cancer drug trial wasn't powered to detect stat sig OS benefit, ECYT didn't even show a trend favoring their drug. I don't get how that's not a big deal. They seem to be employing a similar type of approach for all of their drug candidates so this might even raise concerns for their other drugs. Surely they will have to show an OS benefit in Phase 3 in ovarian cancer to have an approvable drug.

It was love at first sight!:)

All kidding aside, i don't get why ECYT should be treated like a leper when there is minimal downside risk. IMO its a reasonable stock to play at these levels. If it was trading at 14 with a 400 M EV then I would agree with you. Don't you use the same logic for BIOD?

The stock is priced as if the entire pipeline is dead and while the PROC indication has question marks, keep in mind that the only alternatives are PLD and topotecan, none of which demonstrated statistically significant improvement in PFS or OS. Avastin was recently approved as a front line treatment in the EU for advanced OC despite a lack of evidence of OS improvement. While the smaller ECYT trial did not show a trend in OS there were signs that the drug was beneficial in terms of PFS especially in FR++ patients. So there is still the potential of an EU approval for a disease that badly needs alternative treatments.

As for the thought that the entire pipeline is dead, if you read through the description of the drugs in the documentation on their website you can see that there are differences in the drug payload or the linker system with the intention of making the other programs more potent that EC145. Also even if EC145 ends up failing in PROC is there a particular reason to assume that it would fail in other indications? Didn't selumetinib fail in multiple indications before it showed some semblance of positive activity in NSCLC?

Correction about my previous post on ECYT: The PII NSCLC trial will only start this year which means results are years away and not weeks or months.