Sydney, Australia: Benitec Biopharma is pleased to advise that...

Sydney, Australia: Benitec Biopharma is pleased to advise that following review by the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) of safety data from the three patients dosed in Cohort 2 of the company’s Phase I/IIa dose escalation clinical trial of TT-034 for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, the first patient in Cohort 3 has been dosed. This indicates that there have been no serious drug related adverse events in the Cohort 2 patients, in line with pre-clinical expectations.

Don't take this the wrong way, but there's your "comment" on cohort 2. This is because cohort 2 is primarily about safety. We've already heard from other announcements that shrna's are being produced by the previous cohorts. That's good enough for me. Why? Because I feel I can read between the lines a little. For a general PR release, a highly technical breakdown is unnecessary in my opinion...especially given cohort one is about safety. Since we have now moved into therapeutic ranges, I expect to see a little more information provided at the dosing of patient 9.

This PR above was taken from the "6th patient dosed..." ASX release from June 25.

I personally don't believe that the share price suffers because that data is not out. Why? Because it's a means, not the end. And the "end" doesn't come with sub therapeutic dosing. The share price drops because the market knows it can manipulate the share price until firm data showing it is effecting viral load is released. If they released that each patient produced the short hairpins, it still won't mean beans unless we can show it is efficacious.


So in reality, the horse isn't being kept in the stable. It just hasn't been fed enough hay yet!

Just my two cents.

Peace.