Re: BioWatch Commentary
Thanks Alan. And as usual you have additional color that in my opinion bodes well for the Ovarian trail.
(1) Pancreatic detail that 40 of 43 pts had failed Abraxane in prior lines of treatments and that 10 of the 43 were not evaluable (translation died a few weeks after enrolling) speaks volumes about how advanced subjects were and how quickly muti-line resistant Pancreatic cancer kills.
(2) In such terminal population all we could expect was some signs of activity. Subjects are way to advanced to have anything more and even if they got say 15% response rate that would mean extending survival by a few weeks -- that is not enough for a commercial product.
(3) Most significant signal is that over half of the subjects had stable disease or better (DCR of 52%) which again is significant since virtually all had failed prior Abraxane treatment (their tumor grew in a prior line with that treatment). So we can clearly see activity -- adding Rela and GR modulation allows a prior therapy on which subject failed to now control the disease in half the subjects !!
(4) I think now the question becomes how much benefit does GR modulation add in a population that is Abraxane naïve -- can we see meaningful PFS / OS benefit in a trial of GR+Abraxane vs Abraxane in an earlier line (or Abraxane naïve) population.
(5) Ovarian in my opinion has much better chance now that we have seen activity in the trail this morning. That is a slower tumor and the trial design will I guess be PFS / OS that compares Abraxane + GR in an earlier line population (maybe Abraxane naïve). In that setting even 50-60%+ stable disease over the expected 12 mo follow-up should result in meaningful PFS / OS benefit.