Your right Luis,
I'm not all that bent out of shape either. A mouse and 3 drugs, it's possible.
Speculation...Why is lidakol of interest? You have to look at what happened to the last phase 3 studies. Basically they confirmed very nicely the phase 2 studies. THE PROBLEM was that the placebo was also active. There is published info. showing how they ended up with an active placebo and how they proved what happened. They then patented the placebo because it is also active.
What many have overlooked is that Lidakol was MORE active than the placebo in many ways, especially in preventiang outbreaks of fever blisters (>75% when applied in the prodromal phase). (The natural history of fever blisters/oral herpes, is around 10%,,,,no outbreak when prodromal symptoms (tingling) is reported.)
When blisters form, the natural history is around 8-9 days. If I remember right, lidakol and to a slightly lesser extent, the placebo, reduced the blister outbreak to 5 days. This was a double blind study with fever blisters measured both before and after the application of the drug or placebo. In both the before and after periods, the patients had average outbreaks at the usual natural duration.
The above are very compelling and are worth reviewing, especially by those that have some familiarity with evaluating these things. Many have questioned what is going on here, but no one has punched a hole in the above story. I sure would like it if someone sees the weakness in the above reasoning. (Besides the fact it happened in the first place).
Basically if this drug does make it with the same phase 3 results, BUT no placebo (or very little) action, this has the potential to be a big drug. Say they sell 500 million,,,,lidak manufactures the drug and makes say 50 million plus say they get 10% royalty, another 50 million.
They would get 2 1/2 a share for a stock price of minimum 10 dollars and up to 40 dollars a share. |
