A day that started out
profitable for investors of Oncolytics Biotech (
TSX:T.ONC,
Stock Forum) quickly fell into despair after Adam Feuerstein at The Street posted coverage of a CEO conference call, titled “Oncolytics Biotech shades truth on failed cancer study.”
Feuerstein said of the study of Oncolytics’ Reolysin product, “Oncolytics reported results from an ‘intent-to-treat’ analysis of 118 patients with loco-regional head and neck cancer with or without distant metastases. The first red flag: An ‘intent-to-treat’ analysis cannot be conducted on a subgroup of patients. Oncolytics is omitting from its analysis 49 head and neck cancer patients with distant metastatic disease.”
He continued, “The second red flag: Oncolytics was supposed to report overall survival results on all 118 loco-regional patients. Instead, the company gives us results on 88 patients who didn't receive any other therapy after leaving the study. Thirty patients were disappeared from the overall survival analysis.”
Feuerstein’s third red flag was that the subgroup analysis wasn’t statistically significant. When Oncolytics CEO Brad Thompson was asked for data from the missing patients on a conference call this morning, he refused, according to the reporter.
The report went on to note nine red flags.
Reaction on twitter was
also pointed, with several people asking questions such as how the company can “do an ITT analysis of a 167 patient trial in 118 patients?” (@MatthewHerper), and our own Stockhouse Bullboarders suggesting the CEO has “
big decisions” to make.