eerily comfortable....., page-34

I think the confidence is coming from the company being able to see the blinded data. So they are probably seeing patients getting dosed and a bit of a disparity between the time it takes for patient A to progress compared to patient B.

For example say if 2 patients started the trial within the same fortnight or so, they may be seeing a trend where clearly half (give or take) of patients are progressing a lot quicker than the others. From this they are probably thinking it's clear who is on the control arm and who is on the combo arm.

But in saying the above there's no way to know what treatment each patient Is on; and it's possible that some of the patients who are on the control arm are responding well, and some of the patients on the combo arm are progressing quickly. That's the inherent risk in this trial.

Buut going off all the data we know on paclitaxel alone vs the combo, they are taking an educated guess that the PFS figure will come in at the all important p < 0.05