You should really ask Spectral, Birch Hill and Toray, what the interim efficacy number was? Cormark report from Nov.6 2014 - the analyst was "bang on"
Note both the first and second part of his commentary.
He was correct on part #1, and we will presume that the FDA is "good at math" and correct on the re-sizing calculation, that being part #2.
Here are the remarks from Cormark dated Nov.6th 2014:
EUPHRATES optimally; this is a difficult and complicated group of patients to treat, and trial after trial has failed. Based upon conversations with some of the most influential physicians on the topic, we believe that the MODS modification is insightful and selects the patients who are most likely to benefit. Therefore, our confidence that EUPHRATES will report positive data is increased. Our questions are: 1) will it be too late to help these patients (i.e. has endotoxin already done its damage), and 2) will the patients die of something else? We will not know the answers to these until EUPHRATES reports, but in the meantime we believe that Spectral is on track to report a successful trial. Recall, the interim analysis showed that the trial was on track to be successful at 605 patients, suggesting an 11% or 12% absolute benefit (10% at 720 patients, 15% at 360, so the benefit within the less sick patients would be within that range and closer to the lower end). We believe that the benefit within the sicker patients will be larger than what PMX provided to the patients who were previously enrolled, so in our opinion EUPHRATES has a good shot at success. We maintain our Buy (S) rating and $1.70 target price