Replies to post #84198 on Biotech Values

[mcbio]

Re: PARD

I agree that an entry point at this price can be considered risky. Cash on hand is only about 45 million so the share price will likely drop to around 1.5 if results are not stat sig. I was lucky enough to get some when the share price dropped to around $4 a few weeks after ASCO though I have some shares in the 6-7 range as well. I will not be buying any more and instead am focusing on hedging myself but if there are others who got in earlier or at the same time i did I would like to know what they think.

That's good that you've already made some decent profits it appears and are looking to hedge some of that. I think that's quite wise at this stage.

However even for people looking to get in now, odds are stacked in PARD's favor. The treatment arm patients will receive the drug picoplatin plus best supportive care (BSC) while the second arm will only receive BSC, which means they will not get any type of chemo. The standard survival period for patients on BSC is 13-14 weeks based on historical data from past clinical trials. Picoplatin in previous ph II trials demonstrated a range of 27-36 weeks for patients who were refractory and platinum resistant or sensitive. To achieve success pico just needs to demonstrate around 19 weeks survival assuming BSC survival is 14 weeks as expected. There is no reason to believe patients on BSC will survive longer than 14 weeks especially because they will receive no chemo. Based on what management said, to achieve 19 weeks the 320th event, which was the trigger for the data to be collected, should have occurred sometime between july and august and instead occurred in mid september which likely means that the Pico arms survival period was around 26-28 weeks.

I appreciate what you're saying, but there are numerous examples where a drug should have worked based on clinical data to date of the drug compared to historical control data for SoC only to see the drug flop in Phase 3. Also, even though it may not appear to make sense on the surface, there's no way to be certain that the later events didn't in fact occur in the BSC arm as opposed to the picoplatin arm. That's why it's so critical to run Phase 2 trials that are controlled. I'm not saying that PARD absolutely will not be successful in the Phase 3 trial, but it's much more ambiguous in the face of no controlled trial where you're relying on historical data to demonstrate the benefit of a given drug.