Replies to post #169607 on Biotech Values

[bladerunner1717]

jq1234,

You have to put the phrase in context. I can't spend hours teaching you reading comprehension.

Sometimes strong minds come with strong egos. In fact, with intellectuals that's usually the case. But sometimes the strong ego gets in the way of the mind working efficiently.

I know you're frustrated and angry with me, but I really am trying to help you out here. But I can't help you, if you don't want to be helped.

Try relaxing and reading the abstract again. I readily admit that it is easy to mis-read. You and Clark I regard as two of the best minds on the board. The abstract is very poorly written, so you have to dig deeper than you normally do in order to grasp the meaning.

I'm sorry you're upset with me, because I respect you a great deal, but on this one I really know what I'm talking about.


Bladerunner

[pcrutch]

Re GERN

Pretty obvious. President and CEO of Moffitt didn't have a hard time spotting this.

============

I asked two top experts in the field, Gary Gilliland, the former head of cancer research at Merck and the Vice President for Precision Medicine at Penn Medicine, and Alan List, the President and CEO of Moffit Cancer Center, for their thoughts on the data.

“It’s very interesting data but it’s very early, they have small numbers of patients with modest follow up,” says Gilliland. “I hate the hype that comes out around this because these patients are so desperate for treatments.”

In the exciting column: Four of 18 patients had blood test results consistent with a complete remission of disease, and one more with a partial remission and three with clinical improvement.

Gilliland says he’d want to know more about how sick they were at the beginning of the study – healthier patients are more likely to look like they’ve gone into remission based on a blood test. Myelofibrosis can be spotty, he says, so it’s useful to have long-term biopsies to make sure the bone marrow is improving. “Three months is different from two years.”

List notes that a blood test result is not enough to judge a complete remission. “These are not true CRs,” he says. But he’s encouraged by the fact that there was reversal of fibrosis, the bone marrow scarring, in the four patients whose blood tests showed signs of the cancer disappearing. “At least it’s evidence of activity,” he says. “The JAK inhibitors have no effect on fibrosis at all.”

But List does see a “major problem” for the Geron drug. Even for high-risk myelofibrosis patients, the condition is chronic. Imetelstat is likely to be given intravenously once a week for three weeks, followed by once every three weeks. With that dosing schedule, it’s going to be very difficult to get patients to stick to the regimen. “If you can get to a more extended schedule it makes a lot more sense,” List says.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/11/07/independent-researchers-hopeful-but-cautious-about-geron-drug/?partner=yahootix

[biomaven0]

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. The four (22%) CR patients experienced reversal of BM fibrosis and recovery of normal megakaryocyte morphology.

My take here (agreeing with jq1234) is that the bolded text is clearly a shorthand reference to the previous sentence and does not imply these were complete CRs. The fact that the sentence then goes on to discuss only BM fibrosis and morphology reinforces that reading.

Peter