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Biotech / Medical : Cell Therapeutics (CTIC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tuck who wrote (251)	7/27/2004 6:16:06 PM
From: Icebrg	Respond to of 946

The problem I have with the Stellar 3 results is that they are almost too good to be true. Which in 9 cases out of 10 means that they aren't true. But it is very difficult to put a finger on why their survival figures appear to be so much better than what could be expected. Stellar 3 is a large trial with 370 participants and at 80 sites. So it is impossible for the company to "manipulate" the results. One possibility is of course that this is a case of "Investigator's Bias". I.e the situation where a clinical investigator recruits patients with a "good" prognosis to a trial which he sees as promising. This is supposed to be one of the reasons that single-site trials often produce better results than multi-site trials. But with 80 different sites and only a handful of patients at each site, I doubt this is the explanation. A second possibility is that the inclusion/exclusion criteria selects for patients with a generally seen better prognosis. There are factors other than the PS-status that are important to the survival. But these are trials which FDA has given SPA-status and I doubt they would have allowed the company to deviate from what should be considered normal PS2 patients. So, I am at a loss of finding a good reason why these results are not as good as the MTS seems to indicate. It is only that feeling that it doesn't seem logic that Xyotax should be so much better than paclitaxel. Maybe there are a number of reasons which together makes a relatively big difference in treatment effect. The Street doesn't seem to think so yet, however. Erik

To: tuck who wrote (251)	7/28/2004 3:21:06 AM
From: Icebrg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 946

>>Having missed the good window, I wonder if CTIC can't wait until there's some actual excitement about those results or pixantrone's some months down the road.>> Evidently not. Cell Therapeutics, Inc. Announces Pricing of Upsized Public Offering of 9,000,000 Shares of Common Stock Wednesday July 28, 3:03 am ET SEATTLE, July 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cell Therapeutics, Inc. (CTI) (Nasdaq: CTIC; Nuovo Mercato) today announced the pricing of the underwritten public offering of 9,000,000 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $4.75 per share. These shares were sold under an existing shelf registration statement. The offering was increased by 1,000,000 shares over the proposed offering announced on July 14, 2004. In connection with this offering, CTI has granted the underwriters an option to purchase up to 1,350,000 additional shares to cover over-allotments. All shares are being sold by CTI. Bianco had a couple of words about this during the cc. Basically he said that he has learned during his 13 years in Biotech that it is too risky to wait for the best opportunity. It is better to take the money when it is available even if it hurts. Which it indeed does in this case. Before this issue there was roughly 50 million shares outstanding, so 20 % of the company is more or less given away at a price of 4.75 USD per share. The reason according to Bianco for the share issue is the fact that it takes so long to wait for the Stellar 3 results. These are 6 months delayed compared to what CTIC believed when they had completed the enrollment. Erik