The next focusIR Investor Webinar takes places on 14th May with guest speakers from WS Blue Whale Growth Fund, Taseko Mines, Kavango Resources and CQS Natural Resources fund. Please register here.
Konar,
Sorry I'm with you now. I'm pretty sure that it's just the abstract and that the poster has to reflect the abstract - Burble will know for sure.
Konar - in response to your 11.42, yes abstracts must be submitted months before the conference date and are reviewed by the AACR and accepted (or not!). With regards to your 11.56, yes - exactly so!
Falsedawn - We don't know that RG has actually exercised his options, but you may well be right.
We seem to have a situation where expectations have been raised way too high here and yet again are followed by the inevitable disappointment when reality bites. A pattern we've seen time and again. Chelsea has it right, there should be no issue here - Scancell are doing what you'd expect any truly innovative bio to be doing. ie. Attending and presenting at one of the 2 largest, most high profile scientific conferences on the planet. It's beyond me how that's somehow turned into a negative.
I understand the frustration at the lack of promotion on social media etc., but I'd make a couple of comments:-
1) You'll notice the companies making RNS announcements re. AACR this morning have already presented their posters and have waited until they can discuss the content before issuing the RNS. If Scancell follow the same logic then they may not RNS until Wednesday morning, so give them a chance.
2) The Modi1 trial is in its infancy and the presentation seems primarily to focus on the rationale for and design of the trial. If you're going to do PR campaigns and want to retain any credibility amongst those who matter to the future of the Company, then you have to pick your moment. This is not it and the risk is PR is seen as hype.
I have posted many times that I believe the Scancell board needs strengthening and that LD needs more support around her on the commercial and strategic/finance front. I've also banged the drum for at least a part time IR resource which would probably have made all the difference here, so I'm no Scancell apologist. But let's at least be fair. LD attending AACR is not an issue - it's a good thing and long term holders should be happy to see it. Traders will be happy to play it.
AACR isn't an investor conference, it's a scientific conference. A place for LD to showcase Scancell's research to fellow scientists, to make contacts, meet with potential collaborators and to listen and learn about new developments and research being carried out by others. I'd urge folk to have a look at the programme to appreciate the scale of the conference and although we may not like it, there's no way Lindy would be asked to make an oral presentation at such an early stage of the Modi1 trial. The data simply isn't mature enough and when it is, IF it's good enough then maybe she'll get her chance, but even then it wouldn't be guaranteed. IMO it's unfair to suggest that there is something wrong or disappointing about presenting a poster - Lindy is simply doing her job as CSO and finally Scancell are back presenting their research to the wider scientific community.
Whilst I agree that Scancell could and probably should have been more visible on twitter, we don't yet know whether they will issue an RNS to announce their attendance and so I'm going to reserve judgement until later in the week. In the meantime, let's hope her diary is full and that she has some productive conversations in Orlando.
AB124,
Thanks - think Crumbs and a couple of otheres were very much singing from the same hymn sheet too.
The next big one to watch is ASCO in early June in Chicago. It'll be interesting to see whether Scancell have submitted any abstracts and whether they'll be attending. I seem to remember that a few years ago it was through ASCO that Scancell secured the services of Keith Flaherty (huge name in world of oncology esp. melanoma) . Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but from memory Scancell were presenting a SCIB1 poster and managed to snag a breakfast meeting with him during which they discussed the SCIB1 results in melanoma and he agreed to be the princiapal investigator for the combination trial.
Anyway worth keeping an eye out - the submission deadline has been and gone and abstract titles are due to be published towards the end of this month.
Meant to add that hopefully we'll get news soon that recruitment to cohort 3 is complete and Scancell have permission to move to the higher combination dose and to open cohort 4.
ee,
The abstract would have been up to date at the time of submission - the submission deadline was in January.
All the focus is on AACR, but new peer reviewed research from Scancell has been published this week in the Immunology Journal.
'Immune responses to citrullinated and ****citrullinated peptides in healthy donors are not restricted to the HLA SE shared allele and can be selected into the memory pool'
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/MDPTAFWFSFZEJZAN844C?target=10.1111/imm.13645
There have been lots of questions and assumptions regarding the timing and release of the Vulpes report. I think it's helpful to see the report in context and so have posted the link below.
What we have is a write-up on one of Vulpes portfolio companies which is being used to showcase their Life Sciences Fund. The report is found under the 'opportunities' section of their website and it's aimed at Vulpes' own clients/potential clients rather than Scancell shareholders. They also feature Oxford Biomedica with a similar report. Whilst it's great that they see both OXB and SCLP as success stories worthy of showcasing to attract new investors, I'm not sure there's any more to it than that.
It was a great find and thanks to Falsedawn for posting, but it doesn't appear to be a new report as they still have the covidty trial as recruiting. They've obviously updated it fairly recently with details of the new Chairman but haven't updated the whole report. I really think it's as simple as that.
vulpesinvest.com/vulpes-life-sciences/
https://vulpesinvest.com/vulpes-life-sciences/
Anybody with the most basic level of knowledge understands that a successful cancer drug has the potential to generate multi billion $ revenue. That has never been in dispute by even the most negative posters here afaik. However even Vulpes agree that at the moment the possibility of success ranges from 10% (the figure used for current Modi1 valuation) and 25% IF phase I/II clinical trial results are good. They don't even attempt to apply a POS figure to SCIB1 but you can be absolutely sure it won't be 100% - so perhaps not so much Inanesqueness in the Vulpes report.
In terms of valuation and potential revenue figures, as posted yesterday, it's not so very different from other reports. IMO much more interesting is the insight we get into their thoughts regarding the structure of the Company and prioritisation of the pipeline.
Ruck,
Worth having a read of the valuation section of the Vulpes report- the TD and Vulpes valuations really aren't so very different. In fact Vulpes use a possiblity of success rate of just 10% for Moditope which is lower and therefore more conservative than TD.
Other than that, Vulpes mainly seem to be relying on the projected sales figures IF (note capital letters) all products are successful. However, have another look at TD's valuation and again you'll see some very generous and exciting projections, not least combined peak sales for Avidimab/GlyMab of £13.5b which dwarf Vulpes Moditope figures.
Of course the reality is that you can't compare current and projected valuations - it's apples and oranges. The long and short of it is that both reports come to the conclusion that Scancell is currently undervalued and has great potential.
Just wanted to make a couple of points to give an alternative view regarding Richard Goodfellow.
Rather than avoiding deals, it could be argued that Scancell wouldn't have survived without the the glycan mAb deal he struck with John Chiplin's Peptech. Although that deal was 17 years ago and the mAbs were preclinical, it bought in nearly £6m in non-dilutive funding at a time when the funding environment for early bio in the UK was absolutely dire. It was so bad that Scancell were having to cut back on preclinical development and were downsizing to extend their cash runway. To add some perspective cash burn at the time was around £1m per annum. Would strongly suggest people have a read of the 2005 annual report to get a flavour of the environment at the time.
The other point that's easy to overlook is that Scancell were developing and trying to commercialise cancer vaccines at a time when nobody would touch them with a bargepole thanks to the high profile and costly failure of GSK's phase 3 cancer vaccine trials. Despite this, Richard managed to secure funding and allow Lindy to develop and greatly expand the pipeline and ultimately attract Vulpes and then Redmile.
So perhaps the alternative view is that without Richard, ImmunoBody would have been shelved at an early preclinical stage and the Moditope, Avidimab and GlyMab platforms wouldn't even exist.
Johnny,
I wasn't aware that including results was actually prohibited until Crumbs posted the AACR abstract guidelines link. Have to admit I also found it a bit confusing as it made me wonder why the clinical trial abstracts are embargoed. Worth noting that the Transgene abstract comes under a different category - it's a late-breaking abstract and the rules may well be different.
Yes CRO = contract research organisation.
Nearly all bios of Scancell's size will use a CRO to help manage and run clinical trials. They offer a vast array of services and the number and type of functions outsourced will obviously depend on in-house capacity and capabilities.
Johnny/Chester
Meant to add thanks for your posts and for keeping track!!
Chelsea11,
Yes there probably would be a slight delay and worth remembering that in the middle of all this we have the CRO - I assume they're the ones collating, verifying and communicating with the study investigators and Scancell. I think you're right to advise caution, but for a slightly different reason.
The final submission date for the AACR presentation was a while ago - haven't checked, but from memory it was back in February. So whilst the poster may feature data from the 14 previously evaluated patients, I think it's unlikely it will include any new patients. The title of the abstract suggests that the poster will focus on the trial protocol and I'm hoping that they may also include previously unpublished immunogenicity data, but that's pure speculation on my part.
Think we have to be careful not to expect too much from the poster itself, for me the important thing is that Scancell are back doing what they should be doing - presenting new research at the World's largest scientific conferences. It may well be that Scancell issue an RNS to confirm their presentation at AACR and take the opportunity to give the latest update on more patients, but it will have to be via RNS and not the AACR poster.
At least that's my understanding, Burble will know more of course.
Maybe someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember LD confirming that funding was in place to take Modi2 into the clinic in H1 2024 with a study in breast, colorectal, non-small cell lung and prostate cancers. I'm sure there's currently a huge amount of work going in Scancell's labs in preparation for sumbission to the regulators for clinical trial approval.
As we know, the formulation of Modi1 was highly complex and beset with technical issues and challenges which resulted in damaging lengthy delays. With that in mind, I've been having another look at Scancell's agreement with Vaccitech. For anyone new to Scancell, an agreement was signed with Vaccitech (co-developers of Oxford/AZN covid vax) to in-license their SNAPvax technology for use with Modi2. SNAPvax neatly overcomes the issues Scancell faced with Modi1 and will allow them to formulate the ****citrullinated peptides and TLR-7/8a adjuvants in self-assembling nanoparticles. Preclinical testing has been impressive and hopefully that will be replicated in the clinic.
As we were discussing finances, I thought it would be interesting to see if any more information was available regarding the licensing deal and it is indeed covered in Vaccitech's recently published annual report:-
'For the year ended December 31, 2022, our revenue primarily consisted of $43.7 million from the OUI License Agreement Amendment with respect to amounts owed to us by OUI for the commercial sales of Vaxzervria, and $0.8 million attributable to upfront fees associated with a research and license agreement with Scancell.'
I'm not sure how the terms of the deal compare to the licensing agreement signed with Isa Pharmaceuticals for Modi1, but given the potential benefits of SNAPvax tech. for Modi2, around $800k (note USD not GBP) as an upfront payment seems like a good deal.
https://investors.vaccitech.co.uk/financial-information/sec-filings
No, we have one H&N patient with a confirmed, partial response. Not an interesting snippet but hard evidence of significant and dramatic tumour shrinkage due to treatment with Modi1.
Then there is a second patient, we have no idea or even remote suggestion as to the type of cancer they are suffering from, nor the clinical trial they are taking part in. It's impossible to say at this stage that they are 'likely' to be suffering from kidney or H&N cancer and benefiting from Modi1. Whilst it could be Modi 1, it could also be SCIB1 or one of any of the following ongoing trials for other cancer vaccines:-
Prostate cancer ( x2 )
Lung cancer (x2)
Ovarian cancer
Bladder cancer
Brain cancer
Oropharynx cancer
Melanoma
Head and Neck (x2)
Cervical
Penile
Other HPV cancers
ripley
Thank you.