Replies to post #221311 on Biotech Values

[mcbio]

ASMB hits 14-month low—perhaps related to ABUS sell-off today.

Yes, I'll admit this one has been a big disappointment since I took a position, but I'm still holding in full. I'm not aware of a real good reason for shares being down nearly 40% or so in the past 3 months. Not clear to me that any competitor's HBV data has weakened ASMB's prospects and not clear to me that ASMB itself has reported anything new that should warrant such a downturn. If shares are still around this level at year-end, I'll probably be forced to realize a tax loss and then would plan to buy back after thirty days.

[mcbio]

HEC Pharma/(ASMB) -

ASMB hits 14-month low—perhaps related to ABUS sell-off today.

Well, I thought I found a plausible explanation to account for the recent ASMB weakness. I'm not sure when this was initially posted and the results could well have been leaked before but Chinese company HEC Pharma posted preliminary data from a Phase 2a trial of their CpAM for HBV. (I wasn't aware of this company and that they were developing a similar drug to what ASMB doing and in fact a bit further ahead.)

See: https://plan.core-apps.com/tristar_aasld18/abstract/1cd464b79336d9176dd9c2472ad46556 .

Anyways, the data is preliminary data from a 48-week trial and as you can see the median duration of treatment reported in this abstract is 28 weeks. Bottom line: there doesn't seem to be a strong drop in HBsAg. However, I circled back to the prior ASMB R&D Day notes I posted (#msg-141749551 ) and, as you can see, ASMB stated that the Phase 2 trial for their CpAM will be powered to show a .5 log decline in s-antigen at end of 6 months and they hope to see that level of decline or even better. Well, the HEC data doesn't appear too far off from that level at median treatment duration of 28 weeks so I don't think this data busts the CpAM hypothesis. I don't think ASMB would put out that figure for a Phase 2 data point for s-antigen decline if they didn't consider it to be meaningful. Of course, I don't think we know the true level of decline in s-antigen we need to see at 6 months that would point the way to a functional cure.