RE:RE:RE:RE:Merck to buy Prometheus Bio.... "the investgators said they did not have trouble recruiting candidates so this wasn't the reason for the smal number, which is not statistical significant."
Are you referring to the Goblet trials? We do not yet have results on PFS or OS. Those come after everyone on the trial progresses.
Whether the results are statistically significant cannot be answered without the tests being done. The samples in each of the arms are relatively small as you note. They add up to roughly 50. But the purpose of those results is not to be the definitive nail to pin down an approval. That comes in the next trial.
The early days of this company are effectively a different company. They are now doing something entirely different, that was largely unknown to science and seen as fringe activity 20 years ago. So drawing conclusions by generalizing from what happened before they started on the I/O road instead of direct lysis really does not lend any insight.
I think there were lots of good reasons why they attracted no attention in the period from about 5 to 20 years ago. One would be Brad T., second would be coming from Canada, third is they had a weird approach compared to the standard poisons, fourth they did not have really good results until they started doing combo treatments.
Rest assured, I want this company to work as much or more than anyone else. I just say it is obvious they have something valuable in their virus itself, not for killing cancer but for the effect on the immune system. And I do not buy the idea there is some hidden fatal flaw we do not know about.
the results of last fall belie that notion.
They have not had the money to run big trials, nor the expertise, nor the connections with partners to make progress like a well funded small biotech.
But that has meant you can buy a big part of the company for not a huge amount of money.