Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Here, twitter, other places, all have their devoted naysayers. They pretend to be neutral and objective, yet they never appear on other forums for rubbish products, of which there are many, warning the gillible from over investment, not undertanding the evils of the market, the dishonesty of management, or the extended timescales before anything counting as success can occur. Do they selflessly dedicate their time, posting every day, often several times, for our benefit I wonder ? Or are they lowlife pond scum, talking down a potentially great company for their own nefarious ends ? You choose.
Seems like the line to play is a variation on
"look the results look really good, I'm going to stay invested, but there is lots that can go wrong, AS has a trust deficit, he may be over egging the case for 6K, after all, you would expect this to have risen a lot more if it was all good, there must be something nasty lurking in the woodshed. I would be careful if you have too much exposure here, but good luck anyway"
Expect a major attack to get this down to the gap in the 140's tomorrow.
Ceri - your son mentioned :
"He also wondered if it was known, or could be tested, if FAP was present in 100% of cancerous cells, or only in the tumours generically. 100% would be needed to consider AV6000 as a future cure."
FAP is not present at all in cancerous cells, It is found in the stroma cells that support the tumor. They cause the dox to be released which then gets into these cells, and adjacent cancerous cells as well. The mechanism of action is far more robust than he has realised. Sounds to me like he is thinking this is a new targeted treatment rather than a clever targeting of an existing one.
The mainstream news need :
A lead from the Marsden
Co-operation from the company
Actual data, in a press release to make it easy for them
Preferably a human interest angle as well
"Chemotherapy without side effects" is 100% a good enough phrase to hook a big big audience. When Avacta are ready to pull the trigger this will be a giant story I am sure.
The point is that they are using the phrase at all. It is such an outrageous claim (which they have never before put in so many words) that they must be seeing amazing data behind the bare bones communication they have put out. Either you trust their integrity, in which case this company is going to make history, or you think they are a bunch of AIM loser pumper dumpers.
Withdrawls more likely though. He would not be laking about much lower side effects if hey had seen DLTs in several patients. This is going to sound callous, but in P1 trials the patients are not expected to respond clinically to the experimental treatments. They are end of life and are lending their bodies to the scientists in the hope that it will help those that come after. Not long to go now though and we will see this in action with patients it can help. With luck and a fair wind they will be counted in the millions.
In the longer term dox in tumor = efficacy. For these P1 patients not necessarilly as they are late stage, and very unwell. There really should ne no expectation that clinically significant efficay will be seen in this part of the trial. The FAPi PET will be used certainly as a diagnostic, in advance to establish the extent of the tumors. I am not sure it is ready yet for precise post treatment measurement, but I'm sure that will be the objective longer term. Bigger data sets will be needed to calibrate its use quantitatively.
There will also be a massive pull from clinicians to get their hands on this. Every last one of them would rip your arm off for a proven less systemically toxic form of doxarubicin. Of course, once in the market, that pull will extend to every other drug to which the chemistry could be applied. Depending on how big the delta is in the therapeutic index, it is not inconceivable that the rulebook will be torn up and chucked out. Be interesting to see if they make any big claims on the TI by Feb, or keep it under wraps. That is the one number that will drive any future value to dizzy heights.
Not so fast. Whilst I agree in principle, there is a lot of complexity bundled up in here. Not all tumors are high in FAP so they need to be excluded, and some patients - those with severe arthritis, recent major surgery, liver disease etc will probably be excluded. Most importantly though most dox is given in combination regimes. These will each need to be be evaluated, and in some cases trialed, before major changes are made. This is not going to happen overnight by any stretch. Longer term though I have no argument whatsoever with $3 to $5 bn as a conservative estimate for the market size before even thinking about any of the other platform drugs. Not nice to talk about it, but there is also the possibility of premium pricing. I'd rather see this widely and cheaply available, but the gap between current dox prices and immunotherapy is immense. Big pharma with significant income from immunotherapy would be sorely tempted to try and close it.