Tinker, one of the drugs in that clinical trial they are looking at is SD-101, which appears to be the intra-tumoral injectable…
And SD-101 also happens to be the name of a drug on dynavax’s pipeline that does the same thing…
http://www.dynavax.com/our-pipeline/cancer-immunotherapy/sd1…
Ahh, okay. Could be a Medivation like thing where a drug from left field, ignored for decades becomes the multi billion dollar drug to fix Alzheimer’s as an example. Medivation if I recall was a Dynavax like company when they got into the Alzheimer game, doing much of their work in Russia or something like that.
Thanks Fuma. Still worth watching this trial, but I agree not going to put money into such a penny type stock until there are actual results to match they hype.
Tinker
I eill do some more digging to see if I can clarify the relationship but if you look at the paper that started this thread (the mouse paper) they do acknowledge dynavax at the very end though not as a sponsor. I linked to the paper earlier.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apos-not-too-buy-dynavax-1223…
stock is up 400 some percent over the last year apparently, and the new Hep B drug looks very promising. From the current valuation looks like low risk option on the cancer drug.
I can find no mention of this in their press releases and it seems as if we are some of the first people with investing interest to have even put the article and the company together.
However, it is unclear as to what Dynavax would get out of this drug, other than lending their own drug to the cocktail. Worth a deeper look.
Medication had a similar story, it does happen. usually not, but it does happen.
Tinker
They estimate 500m from the HepB vaccine.
The main advantage is 2 shots rather than 3. Shrug.
Add in that:
-Vaccines are usually low margin
-they have zero sales force
-they need cash through at least 2020 to keep them going and at the current rate of $20m/Q - which is almost certain to increase- they’ll run out well before results of their p1/2 ever sees ASH daylight.
Many thanks VitaminD.
The article was posted several days ago on the NPI board. I have been trying to find a way to track the Stanford experiment from the lab to the federal trial website as well as track it to a listed publically traded company.
Any additional thoughts would be appreciated.
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/426/eaan4488.full
Early results promising. Looks better for lymphoma compared to solid tumors efficacy.
DVAX and AZN (via MedImmune) has most IP.
Looks like the NK cell response as well as innate stimulation are important.
Important to realize that still likely in early stages of IO for solid cancers (ie non-lymphoma/leukemia). And likely it will not be as simple as an injection of 1 or 2 compounds.
For example the solid tumors had not been in the mice for a long time (so what was the amount of genetic changes in the cancer? Small, medium, high?). What about injecting into the pancreas, brain, lungs? Will it have a cytokines storm? These questions haven’t been answered in CART or NK space.
It would be great if 2 compounds are all that is needed. Especially if cancer detection happens early in process (less genetic change and therefore theoretically easier to destroy).
Very cool and encouraging work.
Many caveats however. None possibly more important than the mouse work described was done with cell lines, not naturally occurring tumors. Cell lines are often more homogeneous than naturally occurring tumors and the mets that arise from them in short-term models resemble the parental line more than those from “spontaneous” tumors.
I have traded DVAX off and on, and while some view it as a penny stock, so were most other biotechs at some point in their life cycle.
Cosmid