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GMS,
As I said once before on this thread, when the facts change I change my.mind, what do you do?
As for the paper the very last sentence in the conclusions section states
an
."Further extended prospective blinded validation of the new combined signature in a screening cohort with low cancer prevalence would be the recommended step for PSE adoption in PCa screening"
Which is pretty much what Prostate Cancer UK also say.
I suggest you do some research on Stockholm3. It hasbeen used o. Tens of thousands of men in Scandanavia. It too is a blood test and not a drug, but the UK National Screening Committee say it also needs further validation due to a lack of diversity in the ethnic groups to which it has been supplied hence it will highly probably be the candidate blood test in the Transform trial.
What I'm saying is Burrows promised exponential growth of revenues back in July and actually delivered a month on month decline by December. The cash burn will scarcely notice the incremental growth (if there is any!) That you seem to think acceptable.
Burrows is highly likely to ask for £20 million from shareholders or buyers of our IP just to keep the doors open. The Transform trial is a god sent opportunity to get the extensive validation the medical community expect, and to do so at zero cost to OBD. Budgets are currently being negotiated with the participants and the first few thousand volunteers will have been tested against the candidate tests by this time next year. Its an absolute no brainer, yet our CEO had to sit reading extracts from the Prostate Cancer UK press release in a comical attempt to appear knowledgeable.
As for BUPA I have used them on a number of occasions. When you call them to get approval to progress to a treatment the first thing they do is tell you the names of their practitioners that you can consult. They are not BUPA employees but BUPA use them as paid consultants. Oh and yes I understood from the RNS that a deal had been struck with BUPA. What it seemingly omitted to say was that we would be running workshops to try to persuade their consulting oncologists to use their tests. A bit like the failed P2P model that has delivered 'exponential growth' (or not as the case actually is).
Hi GMS,
I think it's no surprise that when your CEO trumpets that exponential growth has been achieved that folks had expectations that sales would at least be up! We discussed this at the time and I took a modest linear growth rate of 20% per month to arrive at a target sales rate of ~200 CiRT tests per month. You thought that was too much, which is fair enough, but it's maybe fair to note that if that modest growth rate is not achieved, there is no chance of the company reaching breakeven in the coming year. That means at least 2 more placings or a sale of the family heirlooms. Reducing the asset value of the company.
The only way I can see a recovery in SP into the 20's is if Burrows is replaced, there's an acknowledgement that neither CiRT or PSE are clinically validated (as opposed to laboratory validated) and we manage to secure participation in Transform. The company cannot finance a blind randomised trial at scale, so Transform is an absolute must do.
The evidence to date is that medics are reluctant to adopt a test that even the paper in Cancers explicitly acknowledges needs further extensive validation. P2P has been a disaster and now we hear that whilst there is an agreement with BUPA the lan is to hold more workshops in an attempt to get BUPA oncologists to behave differently from their colleagues in the US.
Doesn't need to tout his CV to JP Morgan or anyone else hor that matter. He has been working as the President of the contract services division of PolarityTE (Aka RegenETP) from where he had recruited several of our multiple V.P.'s.
He is on £500k a year and is our part-time CEO. I'd laugh if I wasn't invested here.
It's a vanity project. According to the annual report the facility.in Penang is a lab!!!
Why on earth does a company loft 50 employees, losing circa 10 million a year and selling a couple of tests a day need 3 labs? One in the UK, one in the US and one in Asia?
Is there no financial discipline in this company? Why isn't the Chairman challenging some of these absurdities?
Hi Tav.
Can but hope.
Maybe he will also ask why we gave an office in Penang Malaysia that, according to the only numbers I have found, employs 3 people! What do they do?
This increasingly has the feel of someone's vanity project.
6 Senior managers (V.P. and above) share past employers with Burrows. 4 are V.P.'s with sales and marketing responsibilities that are very hard to differentiate from one another. In spite of this abundance of V.P.'s they struggle to sell our products.
I have been unable to find evidence of competitive recruitment processes prior to appointments.
Why do we need so many V.P.'s to accomplish sales of 1 CiRT and 1 PSE test a day? What efforts were made to ensure the incumbents were the best candidates for their roles? Do their job descriptions and KPI's help to define and differentiate their roles?
That's just wrong.
The problem with PSA is it produces too many false negatives, so much so that the majority of biopsies are unnecessary which is a huge drain on NHS resources. If PSE helps avoid the vast majority of false negatives and hence dramatically reduces the number of biopsies the savings to the NHS would be massive rendering the £750 cost of the test and irrelevance.
Oh and £750 is much less than the cost of an MRI scan, which looks to be the current preferred candidate for a National Screening programme.
I recently posted an email I sent to Prostate Cancer UK. The essence of it was to see if they would acknowledge receipt of the letter Burrows claimed to have sent to them. I have just had their reply;
"Thank you for your message and for informing us about the diagnostic product developed by Oxford Biodynamics. I have shared your message with members of our Research Team who are aware of this test. As you have suggested in your initial message, we are still undergoing contracting with the relevant parties for the TRANSFORM study and so are unable to enter discussions with third parties until that has all been finalised. We very much recognise the interest and potential opportunities for collaboration arising through this initiative and intend to reach out to interested parties to discuss further once we are in a position to do so.
Many thanks & best wishes,"
So nothing I wasn't already aware of, except that IF we have established contact with Prostate Cancer UK, we are unlikely to hear anything positive until, probably, the middle of the year. If we have not we need to ensure we are recognised as an interested party for retrospective inclusion.
I'd imagine the company will have had a similar reply if they did send a letter. That makes me wonder why they claim to have employed a lobbyist to approach government as per Burrows's comments?. Seems the wrong route to go down and may even backfire should Prostate Cancer take offence (they are the dominant contributer to the cost of the trial).
@NurseSteve,
Completely agree about the relative merits of the tests, IF PSE continues to perform with a much larger and diverse cohort. (I think.the science is sound so see no reason why it shouldn't). The problem is commercialisation. Clarity has clear support from the relevant Cancer organisation and is already being supported through the regulatory process to become available via the public health network. Stockholm3 has been in widespread use in Scandanavia for some time and is likely to be the lead candidate blood test for the UK screening trial as it has already been referenced by the NSC in relation to the Transform trial. In the meantime our CEO reads to us from his notebook.
There's a rival test out of the University of Alberta and being commercialised by Nanostics. It has support from the local cancer foundation and is progressing through the regulatory process with a view to making it available via the public health system. Its also half the price.
https://globalnews.ca/news/9993876/claritydx-prostate-cancer-blood-test/
Let's not forget he appears to still be in post as President of Contract Services at PolarityTE. Suggesting he's our part-time CEO.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/polarityte-expands-contract-services-business-with-addition-of-jon-burrows-300773220.html