Replies to post #141518 on Biotech Values

[BTH]

3. Farmer barely references INFI's candidate as a competitor (as iwfal posted, he notes that the drug is basically 17AAG once in the bloodstream

I know this is a little off topic, but can someone give a legitimate point as to why INFI has gone from 6 to 13 (still only 350 mill mkt cap) after failing their Hh trial in pancreatic (it wasnt even close to being good), and comments that their Hsp isn't even an after-thought?

[acgood]

SNTA at DB.

the LDH low/normal vs high stratification is across all patients, irrespective of histology or other mutations. Aside from high LDH indicating poor prognosis, I haven't been able to find much in the way of basic research explaining why LDH levels would impact the performance of hsp90 inhibition.

It is interesting that so many dismiss the INFI HSP90 inhibitor, due to it's being "first generation" and having flamed out already in one clinical trial and being ditched by Medimmune. However, they have reported objective responses with their drug and it has no ocular toxicity. NVS has reported exactly one PR to date and has extensive ocular tox. Waiting on data from a couple other competitors to see if any others drop out of the field.

[iwfal]

SNTA -

He also states that if the signal were merely a doubling of PFS at this early stage of the trial, he does not think they would feel comfortable in making this kind of announcement (about the signal in the two sub-groups) at such an early stage of the game. He adds that the signal is extremely strong.

This is a strange way for a company to describe the situation and I would certainly hope they'd checked internally before saying it this way. Note also he didn't bat an eye when one questioner actually (obliquely) threatened a lawsuit over the lack of data - he just explained that the PR yesterday was about moving to ph iii and the color on that decision.