The company didn't release the average of the other 8 because they didn't meet the efficacy target for the trial and they are only half way through a dose escalation trial. Some companies may report signs of efficacy even if pre-defined targets are not met, others (like DXB in this case) just report binary outcomes target met/not met. IMO there are merits to both methods of reporting, but the purists will prefer the way DXB has done it here.
The 50% reduction in proteinuria target is a very ambitious target first of all because there is pretty much diddly squat treatments available for chronic kidney disease, and of the diddly squat treatments available, these patients are already on it. A 50% reduction in proteinuria can add years to renal survival. Getting this sort of reduction in proteinuria is kinda like a holy grail of a target for kidney treatments - it shows you can save the kidney.
When the trial is complete they might report the averages you are after, but realistically for a patient suffering from kidney disease they are looking for the big gains like the targets here. A 10% reduction in proteinuria is nice, but really no cigar.
3/11 is pretty good. Some people might say it looks bad but the probability of getting a 50% reduction in proteinuria by placebo/doing nothing/current treatment is next to zero, so getting an efficacy target success rate of 27% is pretty good. The patients in the trial have already exhausted current treatment methods so they have run out of options. What the overall rate of efficacy is at the end of the trial will be mostly depends on the dose escalation strategy the experiment designers have employed. They might have had a certain dose in mind that led to maximum efficacy and planned to reach this at the half way mark, then tested some higher doses just to be sure. If this is the case then it is unlikely that the efficacy rate will improve much (if at all) by the time the trial is completed. On the other hand they might not know what an optimum dose is and have just increased dose every x weeks and then when the trial is complete they go looking for the minimum dose that had maximum efficacy. Who knows what they have in mind, we have to wait until the trial is complete. Fortunately for this sort of trial, we don't have to wait long.
If they still have 3/11 at the end of the trial, my expectation is that they will call it a success and proceed to a bigger trial. If they got 5/11 that would be a sensational result.
DXB Price at posting:
0.9¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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