RE:AGMIt will make for another interesting meeting, but Soleus is in control of that now. Guess we'll see what they think.
It's never worth overreacting one way or the other on earnings release days. Best to let it rest and take a few sober days to let objectivity fall back in line. I personally see a mixture of plusses and minuses in the release, but don't see anything that would lead me to believe the potential for a successful tumor targeting peptide is off the table. As such, to me the actual "fair value" didn't change much today one way or the other.
The market clearly needs to absorb some sellers who have a justification to leave it behind. I did notice, it seemed to go down after NBF published so maybe it's residual ONO holders.
I'm as pissed as anyone that they missed their milestone deadline --Paul can no longer say that he hits his deadlines like he used to say. I chalk this up to the fact that cancer clinics are stuffed with various, complex target Phase 1 drugs and THTX is an unknown tiny company, sortilin is an unknown target itself, peptides are very knew, fairly unproven and not yet as sexy as ADCs which have loads of approvals. I have to think this drops it down the list in places like MD Anderson. I don't believe there's some sort of random fair-use generator that rotates acceptable patients amongst the various 1a dosage trials. It's whether an oncologist has an understanding, what level of risk they want to take around POC/FIRM/MOA, etc... and who has spoken to them about using it for their patients. They are the tiny, odd firm --the ugly duckling -- in the registry. That cost them months.
I don't look at trying for 420 as a negative at all and, in reality, all they want to do initially is go for the quickest and simplest route to market -- so just get yourself a level that's workable for 1b, meaning large enough to have an effect (which this is), and in enough cancers with sortilin that at a minimum it will excel in one --if your lucky it excels in more. So they are doing the right thing to bring it down, do it at a level they believe will be safe, and move it on to 1b to start the efficacy and tumor fighting part. It is a level that should still show POC and efficacy if it does what the clinic informed them it should do. Then you can quickly crank up the P2, the AA/BTD and keep it going quickly. That all makes sense to me and, importantly, it doesn't mean they can't do trials in P2 or later where they mess around with it for certain tumors and go for higher levels. They mentioned the therapeutic window of differing doses and frequencies is part of what they may be able to provide as long as it's safe and the target works. The latter two are the key and seem to be more likely than not, the case. In the future they can crank up the toxin or use those more powerful ones. We only need the fastest 1 target to market.
So, by increasing the number of tumor targets, they've actually increased their chances at going fast to market --they haven't decreased them given that colorectal and pancreatic were in the 30-50% overexpressed levels and likely harder nuts to crack at the outset. Just may be their
peptide and an existing pancreatic toxin would crack it --but no need to bother with it now.
I would just end this sober reflection by just saying that a while back we weren't even sure if the peptide could withstand the human environment, if it would degrade and be worthless, if it wouldn't reach targets, if it would go to the wrong places. Clearly, there may have been some of that at the higher level, but in general we have a much better sense that the peptide seems to be able to stay intact and get most where it needs to go. They didn't say that, but if it didn't stay in tact, we'd have seen problems in patients all along and it if didn't go to where you want it, you'd also see loads of problems at the 1.5 level given the 1.0 level is max safe level and they do send it all over the body via IV. So the trial has already spilled out a few decent size positives. The biggest we still don't know and will have to wait for 1b, but they've increased the probability via only going with high sortilin cancers, and have increased the chances for finding one to fast track by adding 4 new cancers and taking off two lower sortilin cancers.
That's not all bad - so a bit of good with a bit of bad. Sucks we need to keep waiting to learn more. As Mr. Petty says, the waiting is the hardest part..... But Paul, you are no longer "always meeting targets" so refrain from that. We just need success to be much higher probability than it is now, which is pretty close to single digit success ratio at these prices. Pressures on and expect some ranting at annual. Littlejohn & Lacoste? Still need market saavy skills and an actual outside independent to kick start it -- maybe get Rothenburg on the Board!
Trogarzon wrote:
Well since Ph1a won't be finished before the AGM I guess.. we shareholders in absence of information will have to decide if we keep statu quo of the present state of affairs at Th. This Pfizer B team is not delevering the goods end of the story. Nobody will, lets get an exit strategy in focus.