Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

Chugai / ALK:

I read on a patient message board today that Chugai was amending their trial soon to increase the dose for healthy patients from 600 mg twice a day to 900 mg twice daily.

This one can go both ways. If you own the stock you say that it is safe and worth increasing the dose to increase / improve the responses. If you're a competitor you say they're desperate to see any sign of efficacy.

They are also reportedly stretching the scans out from every 6 weeks to 9 and are discontinuing the every 6 weeks head MRI.

This one looks positive to me. Remember that RECIST criteria require a confirmatory follow-up scan. If you're lengthening the time in between scans, I think that says you're confident that the responses persist.

Other runner-up possibilities in my view:

- Cost. But I don't think cost is an issue for Chugai.
- Trajectory of disease. They may think, based on the response dataset to date, that scanning every 6 weeks is a waste of time based on how long it takes responses to appear and the typical duration of response.