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Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation
CRSP 56.89+1.2%3:59 PM EST
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To: Icebrg who wrote (10332)2/7/2004 6:28:59 PM
From: Biomaven  Read Replies (1) of 52153
 
Why do you think the trial was designed the way it was?

I can't speak to their actual thinking - I didn't follow the company at all back then. But logically, the key trade-off is that you then get only half as many patients on drug. So particularly if you believe a priori that there may be a subgroup that doesn't respond to the drug at all (by failing to make antibodies) you might be reluctant to have just 50 people on drug.

So bottom line is that a 100-person two-arm study (which I'm assuming was all they could afford) may well have not had enough power to produce significance and would certainly have given them less data on how people respond to the drug. Not saying they made the right choice, though. But if you think of this as the first in a series of Phase II's then it becomes more understandable.

One of the omissions in this PR was gastrin levels (or some surrogate for them). I have some distant memory of them discussing this in the past, but I may be imagining it. One of the real costs of my overly broad (as many would describe it) set of biotech holdings is that I just don't have the time to track all the details of each company I follow. My investment here was one of the "at these prices it looks like decent gamble" decisions which I'm prepared to make as long as the investment is reasonably small.

Thanks everyone for their participation in this exercise. We got a lot of very divergent opinions, which is what I was hoping for. Overall my opinion was more favorable than the consensus, which is kind of what I had expected.

Unfortunately we most likely get to wait a few years to find out what the correct analysis actually was.

Peter
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