Theratechnologies Inc T.TH

Did it move tail risks?

[Wino115]

To me, I just want to make sure they're putting TH1902 in a position to become a viable treatment in the future. Christian let it slip how they are hoping to use this treatment and it aligns with what Belevieu said before --they want the ability to use a good dose that gets concentrated and internalized over a longer period with no major safety issues. He let slip that the "issue" with refractory patients is to get something that helps put tumor on the defensive for as long as you possibly can --supress the tumor and stop spreading so the patient can live longer. By going to 300 and eliminating whatever they saw at 460 will create that therpeutic approach with what they saw was negligible safety issues.

I think it's pretty clear the 300 level should pass since they had already moved beyond that and we never heard issues with 300.  So that's the final group going now.  To me, that eliminates some of the downside since they are solid on the safety and have a dose that's large enough.  

Sounds like any efficacy data will likely only be in 1b, so I can't change the probabilities much on the option value.  But what they did do is the increase the size of the market they're going for by a bunch.  Adding in the second HR+ breast cancer makes it much larger as does melanoma -- those are both very large markets. Same for lung. I'm not sure if the HR+ market would also allow them to move into more to 2L or 3L markets, but it's definitely no longer just $12bil market they are addressing.  I would guess HR+, melanoma and lung alone would add another $4-5bil to that market size as a guess.

The quicker move to get a "parallel" development going in markets they don't want to set up in seems to point to a China deal happening sooner than I would have thought, so that's a positive given the current prices being paid for ADC deals. I guess you can add somethiing in for that now in a valuation model.

My net conclusion just around oncology is the negative tail of 1a not reaching a therapeutic dose or being  unsafe is off the table, but the larger part around efficacy is still there since no data.  The probability is the same for that reason, but the ultimate size of the prize -so the scale of the upside potential is much larger by 50% or so.  If you were to actually throw that into the oncology option model you'd likely increase the option value by $.75 to $1.00.

But I doubt the market is actually trying to think this way, so don't expect to see that even though analytically, what they've said around TH1902 is a net-net positive. I guess the surprises will be China quicker than I thought, and the published data and on to the larger 1b in 2-3 months according to Christian.  But rest was a bit of a ho-hum, kick the can down the road for me.

[qwerty22]

I think the way I'm seeing this is the end to 1a was imagined to come with enrolling 6 patients at 420 but as patients recieved more of that dose the accumulation of AEs has forced them to take a step back after just 4. The pain comes from a simple phrase like "step back" means 2 or 3 or 4 months. So that final step of 1a starts again now at 300 in effect. It's excruciating that

[qwerty22]

On Christian's 2-3 months statement for the end of 1a. It looks like what they wanted to achieve at 420 was 6 patients having a number of cycles of the drug. What Christain described for 300 was 6 patients taking 1 cycle. It's hard to see why it might shift from wanting to see what happens over several cycles to being content with 1 cycle. Assuming the first iteration on timelines is

[SPCEO1]

It seems pretty obvious to me that the phase 1a trial has been messy but I suspect that is true for most. That messiness cost us time but all will be quickly forgotten if the overall result is positive. I think the reason we are not getting any clear info on the trial is that it has been a messy situationand they are not keen to show us that. So, all we get is partial positive info for the most

[Wino115]

A few other intriguing points were hinted at.  First off, in the pipeline they still have the docerubicin TH1904 in there, despite saying they won't bother given how broadly TH1902 appears to be working at.  And they are now testing SN38 and have listed immunotherapy drugs and TKIs previously.  This wasn't the normal slide they show it at, but we know there's more.  

[SPCEO1]

So much of what happens with TH in the future now revolves around cancer. If it goes well, then we will all be happy. Today, we learned we have to wait even longer to find out just how well it has gone, which is pretty much how it always seems to go with all drug trials - hurry up and wait!  I don't have a lot of time right now to get into the nitty gritty details of today's release

[stockman75]

What is your impression of the comment about the medical conferences... the response was very terse/blunt regarding they could not elaborate on the conference. I may be reading way into the tea leaves but I took it as we have some market moving information which I can't go into. probably just my wishful thinking/hoping..

[qwerty22]

The conference talk was about the R&D work they've been doing over the past year rather than the clinical trial data, that was my understanding.

[SPCEO1]

I would agree, especially now that the phase 1a will not be completed for another two months at a minimum. But the data from the labs could still be market moving info. Whether it is something really important or not we obviously cannot yet know for sure but that is the impression I had but that could simply be my confirmation bias at work.  As Christian said, they have been working in the

[SPCEO1]

That was my read as well.