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Perceptive's Edelman slams cancer vaccines in Barrons..and why I think he'll be proven wrongSomeone will post what Perceptive Adivsors' Edelman says in the new Barrons and it might as well be me:
---------------- A couple comments before I counter Edelman's views, at least as relates to my category bet, Argos. -- Earlier in the article, Edelman picks Versartis as a top one-trick-trial company bet, and I've been an investor in that for the past year. As all of us know on this Board, Edelman is right about most things. He bet very big on Serepta. -- Critics of Argos could gain more traction Tuesday when Argos announces the results of the IDMC meeting late last week/this weekend. If they push their next IDMC meeting well in the future, well past ASCO, it will increase any concerns that Argos' vaccine doesn't work. ---------- I am not going to touch on what NWBO's supporters would say as relates Edelman's comment. There are legions who will do this better than I could. Let's look at the 4 examples Edelman uses: Dendreon; Cellex; Aduro Bio; and NewLink. ......And why none of these four apply to Argos' Rocapuldencel-T (formerly ags-003.) Edelman on Dendreon: "Though approved, it turned out to be a failure." This is largely because Dendreon wasn't prepared to manufacture at a low cost, was too difficult to ship and too burdensome on the clinic (detail I'm leaving out here on this last point because it's an educated readership.) There are two category ways in which Argos is different. First, Provenge was never tested in a combo trial, which fits current clinical strategies better. Second, as Stanford's Edgar Edelman, the co-founder and science leader for Dendreon has recently explained, Dendreon made the mistake of using the science in it's most basic form, (I'm paraphrasing,) because they felt they needed to move quickly to market in order to raise capital. Argos has solved the manufacturing, shipping, and clinic issues. It's a combo trial. They significantly evolved the science Edelman: Some attempts at cancer vaccines that failed last year came from Celldex Therapeutics [CLDX], Aduro BioTech [ADRO], and NewLink Genetics [NLNK]. Clearly true. However none of these four are remotely similar to the method of action of Argos' Roca-T. Aduro, NewLink, and Celldex were not using the full set of antigens. As Perceptive's Edelman says , "you can be 99% effective, but if there are remaining cells you still have cancer." I think what these trials show is, at the minimum, that vaccines may need to use the full set of antigens, which is only possible with an autologous approach. These three companies tried to develop, essentially, an off-the-shelf product that would be cheap to produce and have big profit margins. ---------- Besides having solved the manufacturing and clinic issues, Argos significantly advanced the technology beyond Provenge. As readers of this board know, cancer cells adapt to not show a protein on their surface that signals to the immune system that it's a cancerous cell and should be killed. Argos' technology trains the T-cells so that they don't need to see this protein on the surface -- whenever they see a cell with the antigen set, they kill it. Even one of the problems with PD-1's is that they help the T-Cells do their job better, but the number of T-cells a body has is limited and a body runs out (a leading reason why PD-1's only are effective in 30% of the patients.) Whereas Argos injects Memory T-cells, and by regular booster shots, is able to maintain the full volume of memory T-cells perpetually. Finally, with all of these differences vs partial-vaccines (Aduro, NewLink and Celldex) and full vaccines (Provenge,) Argos is pitting it's Roca-T in combinations, so that the trial is (Roca-T + Sutent) vs Sutent in first line, or (Roca + Opvido) vs Opdivo alone in second line. |
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Msg # | Subject | Author | Recs | Date Posted |
8475 | Re: Perceptive's Edelman slams cancer vaccines in Barrons..and why I think he'll be proven wrong | Hodag | 0 | 2/18/2017 10:59:00 AM |