It's no wonder that the company is reluctant to talk about SVR...

It's no wonder that the company is reluctant to talk about SVR at this stage of the trial. There are significant variations in the shrna levels in the two patients tested in cohort three. Doubtless, therefore, that the levels of knockdown vary also. The sample really is too small to draw any conclusions and so the company is quite right in waiting to publish any SVR data. Cohort 2 also showed significant variations in patient's shrna copies per cell.

Given the variations in the first two cohort 3 patients, I think it is now much more likely that no SVR data will be made public until after cohort 4 has been completed. Hopefully, the lowest number of shrna's per cell in cohort 4 will be high enough to achieve a 98%+ level of viral knockdown.

The trial highlights that different patients have quite different uptakes of TT-034 even at the same dose. It would seem that patient 6 has shrna's levels high enough to ensure SVR12, if the trial results match the replicon results, but patient 7, probably won't achieve this. These results do seem to increase the potential for cohort 4 to achieve the efficacy that we are all anxious to know about.

Good to see some of the data behind the abstract.