Dr Behrenbruch got some pushback after his frank assessment of Starpharma. This was his reply:
As a number of (slightly cocky and goading) readers pointed out today, my prior post on Starpharma's utterly stupid pre-clinical announcement had a major flaw. In the interest of being comprehensive, I would like to make an additional follow-up comment, while completely acknowledging my own incompetence and stupidity.I was too busy telling you about the gaps in Starpharma's underwhelming mouse study. I was so busy reacting with ridicule that in climbing over itself to make a completely sensationalist but irrelevant ASX announcement, Starpharma didn't actually bother finishing the animals studies (still ongoing, apparently). I was so busy trying to recalibrate you on the lack of controls and the basic lack of meaningful information, that I forgot something super important.What is that you may ask?Well, the super-important information that I didn't see - but that several other people did - was the lack of efficacy in the Herceptin (naked antibody) and Kadcyla (ADC) comparative treatment arms. Duh. Below is a figure from a nice paper in Clinical Cancer Research from 2011 that shows the type of response we expect to see in a SKOV-3 model with Herceptin. I should note that the Herceptin (Trastuzumab) tumour response is very typical, per the references in this 2011 paper.So yes, the message you should take home is not only was Starphama's basic scientific integrity poor, and not only was the data incomplete, but the actual data itself is crap. I should also add that not only is it surprising that the company shows basically nil treatment effect in a xenograft model that is well known to respond well to Herceptin (and Kadycla), but also no dose is disclosed for the comparative treatment arms, nor any data on animal weight loss (to calibrate tumour volume changes). Both of which would be de rigeur …Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
SPL Price at posting:
62.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
