RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Starpharma Maybe the take home message from starpharma is how you get your drug into the cell can have a profound effect on its characteristics, but that's pretty obvious already. They look to have solved a safety problem but the efficacy impact is yet to impress. Almost certainly you can't predict what is going to happen with th1902 based on this but it probably won't be like starpharma's drug or normal docetaxel. We probably need it to be better than both.
jfm1330 wrote: My point was never to say that Starpharma was a good investment or a better company than Thera. I just saw some similarities with docetaxel, and their dendrimer thing being kind of their PDC platform. Not saying that dendrimer and PDC are the same, they are obviously not, but both can attach through cleavable linkers existing anti-cancer drugs. So there is a clear similarty there. Also, it was interesting to see their good preclinical data and correlate that with what they got, up to now, on humans. Even though the picture of their clinical results is not clear.
SPCEO1 wrote: Despite my concerns about the overall sketchiness of Starpharma, I do not disagree that its efforts have some relevance for our thinking about TH. But I am happier with my investment in TH than I would be if I owned Starpharma. TH has roughly $70 million in product sales (vs. $4.1 million for Starpharma in the 12 months thru June 30, 2021), a phase III ready NASH asset about to be partnered and a fast tracked cancer drug moving quickly thru its phase 1a trial that sure seems far superior to what Starpharma has told us about their drug thus far and which has languished over many years to make real progress in their trials. They both have about the same amount of cash on the balance sheet and TH's bad analyst coverage is much better than that of Starpharma. And TH is cheaper!
Hopefully, PL will see fit to divulge some info this Wednesday, much as BYCY and Starpharma do, on TH's open label phase 1a trial.
jfm1330 wrote: Some can say what they want about Starpharma, but it has clear relevance concerning the use of docetaxel. We knew that, but their data shows that good preclinical efficacy on xenograft nude mice needs to be taken very carefully. It is by no means directly transferable to real human patients with real big complex tumors. That being said, Starpharma claims to have been unable to reach the maximum tolerable dose in phase I, but at the same time they disclosed that they did not go really over the MTD of docetaxel alone of 100 mg/m2, their maximum dose in phase I was equivalent of 105 mg/m2 of docetaxel alone. So their only advantage over docetaxel alone was not related to a higher dose, but to the slow release of the drug allowing less toxicity, and also, in theory, selective release in the tumor external environement, followed by passive diffusion into cancer cells, and not overcoming MDR mechanism. Despite all these weaknesses in their system, they achieved some efficacy on humans in phase I and are now in phase II with 40 patients enrolled.
So if Thera can reach at least twice the MTD of docetaxel alone (460 mg/m2 of TH1902), they should have an enormous advantage. On top of it, if TH1902 works as claimed by Thera, it should bypass the MDR resistance mechanism. Then, it should be much more efficacious, even on some cancer resistant to docetaxel through MDR. But that will be, only if TH1902 works as designed to, on humans and on real big complex tumors. To me, on paper, TH1902 is a far superior system of bringing docetaxel selectively inside cancer cells. But that is on paper. We always end up at the same place for now. It needs to prove that it works as planned on humans. We will see what Levesque will say this week in the fireside chat.