Replies to post #154345 on Biotech Values

[iwfal]

ONTY -

The statistical features of the START trial have been debated on this board ad nauseam; the relevant posts can be found in the iHub archive.

I feel bad for them. As strong stock board communities go they were very rational and reasonable.

That said, they are the poster child for the lesson that "A trial 'going long' is a completely unreliable indicator of success.".


The only other question is what alpha did they assign to the interim. Now that it is a failed trial we may never know.

[p3analyze]

Roy your odds of correct prediction for cancer vaccines just improved to 50-50 (sipuleucel-t down stimuvax up) ;-)

OK we know this is a long shot after non-stop at IA2. But all is not lost according to Francis Shaperd

Quote
“It is disappointing that the START trial did not meet its primary endpoint, in particular for patients suffering from NSCLC,“ said Dr. Frances Shepherd, Scott Taylor Chair in Lung Cancer Research at the Princess Margaret Hospital and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Coordinating Investigator of the START trial. “However, notable treatment effects were observed in certain subgroups of patients and warrant further investigation of L-BLP25.”
End quote

Hopefully we will see some data at ASCO.

[DewDiligence]

ONTY CC at 8:30am ET (eom).

[dav1234]

Stimuvax, a lung cancer vaccine that Germany's Merck (MKGAF.PK) has licensed from Oncothyreon (ONTY), failed to improve overall survival in a Phase III study. However, "notable treatment effects were observed in certain subgroups of patients." That's not enough to convince analysts: "Despite potential positive effects in subgroups, we consider the drug dead," says Deutsche Bank. Oncothyreon collapses 61%, while Merck is -2.9% in Frankfurt

[caravon]

Is Stimuvax dead in NSCLC? It is a good question.

Is ArQule's Tiva dead for NSCLC? Apparently, the answer is Yes if one intend to treat the entire NSCLC patient population. Tarceva and Irissa do not work for all NSCLC patients either.

It appears that NSCLC is not a single disease but rather an array of various things. Furthermore, these things do change as the NSCLC disease progresses and various mutation processes take place.

Unfortunately, until now, researchers were trying to find a magic bullet capable of addressing and solving all NSCLC problems.

I would like to suggest that we shall wait for the results before making the final decision regarding to Stimuvax in NSCLC.

Finally, I see nothing wrong "with data mining" as long as these data analysis are done on solid scientific bases.