Time for a new IMU thread!, page-27

> However, my understanding is the last chemo treatment was day 56 so perhaps improvement we are seeing at what I think is day 98 is still the
> effect of chemo.

I doubt that a chemo treatment on day 56 would continue to produce improvements at day 98. Chemo is essentially a poison that kills fast growing cells. It passes through the system in a relatively short time frame (24-48hrs or so). It kills the cancer cells that it reaches that are susceptible to treatment and it takes several weeks for the effects to be seen. The cancer cells that aren't killed by the chemo continue to grow. (Have you ever used weed killer? Notice how it takes days/a couple of weeks for the weeds to shrivel and disappear. While any weeds you didn't get continue to grow and spread.) The chemo used for gatric/GEJ cancer is given in 3 week cycles because that's how long it takes for the white blood cells to recover to a minimum level necessary for another round of treatment to occur. So day 98 is essentially 2 cycles after day 56 (2 x 21 = 42). For improvements to continue to be seen at day 98 then it's almost certain that either 1. they were continuing with chemo that had yet to become ineffective, 2. they discontinued with chemo and the HER-Vaxx was doing what we are all hoping it will do OR 3. they continued with both. Given day 98 falls on a treatment cycle day, it's entirely possible they were continuing with chemo. Both bloods and scans would have been done while they were in for treatment. It's not a bad thing if chemo was continued and wouldn't really mess with the long term data. GEJ cancer is really nasty and chemo by itself is rather ineffective and positive results are only short lived.

Yes, it would be interesting to see how well the first patients are doing now however without knowing their full treatment history and at what stage their illness was at, the answer wouldn't necessarily mean anything at this point in time. Remember that the ph 1 trial was all about safety. The next trial, ph2, will be all about efficacy. The results of the ph2 trial will determine the likely success of the drug. No matter what, if HER-Vaxx is effective, it's going to be several years or more before we have that answer. At some point we will have data that can be compared to the Herceptin trial data and I think it's likely that something could be extrapolated out from there to determine if HER-Vaxx is likely going to be successful (although that will probably be done internally and used for negotiating a deal and us shareholder will probably never hear about it).

You will find the researchers will almost certainly continue to use conservative descriptions for results for some time even if it was looking like being curative. They won't want to make that kind of call knowing that if it killed only 99.999% of tumors, it could take several years for any resistant cells to grow large enough to impact. It's all sounding really exciting to me but you need to have a lot of patience if you're in it for the long haul and also be accepting of the risks. If you're looking to trade, there should be some good opportunities as the market see's likely success and drives the price up then the impatient sell and drive the price back down.