Biotech Values

[BTH]

This is really slicing and dicing stuff so let's try and look at this another way:

This included five (28%) patients who met the BM and peripheral blood morphologic criteria for CR (n=4) or PR (n=1) and 3 patients with clinical improvement, pending validation of response duration and resolution of drug-induced grade-1 thrombocytopenia

Is it possible to conclude, that since (CI) is less of a reaction than a (CR) or (PR), that the 3 patients who had a (CI) (pending validation) BUT did not have the criteria for (CR) (ie BM and PBM) can translate into the (CR) and (PR) patients having the (CI) response because a (CI) is a lesser of a response than a (CR) ...ergo, CI (then) CR/PR in that order of response?

Or is it the opposite? Would the CR/PR criteria (BM/PBM) come first in therapy, followed by the CI criteria (ie., spleen, anemia etc.) because the blood disease is actually the cause of the secondary disease?

Yes, this is a silly conversation because it's all about parsing words. It is what it is in the abstract....unless Tefferi is lying (which, why would he?). If there are clear BM and PBM responses, one could make the assumption that resolution of those problems would later on down the line lead to resolution of secondary disease (spleen etc). If that is the case, the other criteria (other than BM/PBM) could possibly have a delayed effect, whichm upon more treatment, leads to BM effect, which stops the liver and spleen from compensating (the cause of the enlargement).

Is it a reasonably conclusion that Jakafi would have a much quicker effect on spleen response because all the Jak is doing is affecting the secondary conditions, whilst not doing anything to the BM - whilst, imetelstat has exactly the opposite effect (possibly)?

Clearly, a more defined abstract would have made all this nonsense speculation go away.... but, since we're here talking :)

thanks