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Post by JHam on Jul 11, 2014 11:36:16 GMT
Copying over more posts from iHam.
I increased my position in ONCS today. No doubt this stock has kind of an ACTC-type cult following to it. People think it is the best company ever, with the best science ever, and are literally pouring every cent of their paycheck into it. That scares me a bit, however I can't ignore the potential. I also like the recent moves the company has made over the last few months, positioning themselves well for the future and showing just how confident they are in what they think they have there. A few of those moves are:
- Hiring Dr. Robert Pierce from Merck to be their Chief Medical Officer
- Appointing Dr. Soldano Ferrone to their Scientific Advisory Board
- Literally quadrupling their amount of employees
- Opening a major r&d center in Seattle (they are headquartered in San Diego)
- Raising $16M in cash
They obviously think they have something big on their hands and it seems these world renowned experts in PD-1 and tumor immunology recently joined the team believe so as well.
The stock price crashed in anticipation of and due to the capital raise. They closed the deal in early June, and like after most raises the company has been silent for a bit.
There are some upcoming catalysts that could change that:
- Full data on their Melanoma Phase II trial
- Launching of Phase IIb for Melanoma (will be a combined therapy trial)
- Interim data for their Phase II MCC (merkel cell carcinoma) trial
All of the above items could happen starting anytime this month (probably a bit later and into August though).
They are more than likely going to partner with someone for this Phase IIb combined therapy trial. Just to re-hash, BMY, AZN, and Merck all have PD-1 drugs that are now considered the future of cancer treatment. However, as promising as they are, they only produce a 30-40% response rate. ONCS believes their proprietary platform, ImmunoPulse, turns those 60-70% of non-responders into responders. Theoretically raising the rate of responders closer to 90%+. If they can show prove this in Phase IIb, as they believe they can, based on how they are directing all of their resources to do so, then I think the potential growth here is pretty spectacular.
Still a big if at this point and as always anything can happen. But that comes with the territory with these speculative biotechs. A r/s & up-list could also happen in the near/mid term that could make things a bit volatile, but I still like the risk vs reward at this level.
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Post by JHam on Jul 11, 2014 11:37:27 GMT
More copying...
Good question For the Future. I'll try and dig around for clarity on that. This is how I understand it at this point: They inject engineered DNA (IL-12) that contains a special "Cytokine" into the cancerous cells. This cytokine boosts the body's immune system and recruits surrounding immune cells to go and attack the cancerous cells.
So the way I understand it, IL-12 gives the body the stimulation it needs and may be lacking in later stage patients to go and fight the cancer. Another thing to keep in mind is that one of the reasons why the body is so weak in late stage patients is due to the amount of toxicity from chemotherapy destroying the body's healthy cells. ONCS's approach is natural without using any toxic chemicals. The body does all of the work on its own with a little boost from IL-12.
And one last thing I want to re-iterate, as it is pretty confusing. ONCS' *mono-therapy* approach is the following. As explained in the post above, after they inject IL-12 into the tumor, they zap it with their OMS device which temporarily opens pores in the tumor and allows IL-12 to enter directly into the heart of the tumor. This process is known as ImmunoPulse, their main scientific platform. So far results have been encouraging in that in those who respond their results are pretty dramatic. However, there is still an amount of non-responders.
On the other hand, separate to what ONCS has been doing to this point, PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors are widely referred to as the future of cancer treatment. So much so, that as I have mentioned before, BMY, Merck, and AZN are all conducting trials for their own version of treatment using PD-1. These trials have also shown very encouraging results to this point, however like ONCS, there are also a significant amount of non-responders.
What is causing the excitement to swirl around ONCS is that at ASCO a few weeks ago (and before that), they presented data showing that ImmunoPulse has the ability to convert those PD-1 non-responders into responders.
In short, if these companies developing PD-1 as a cancer treatment want to maximize their response rate, they likely need ImmunoPulse to do it. The fact that Dr. Pierce left his role as lead developer of anti-PD-1/PD-1's at Merck to join ONCS very much suggests that big pharma is trying to better understand ImmunoPulse in my opinion.
ONCS has shown promise as a mono-therapy, but it is clear that this combined therapy with a PD-1 is where it is all at. Many are even speculating (logical speculation) that they could eventually scrap trials as a mono-therapy altogether and go forward as a combined therapy only. We'll see what happens with that.
However, my interest in this company is pretty much solely based on the combined treatment approach and corresponding Phase IIb. It makes the most sense for ONCS to partner up this trial with one of these big pharmas that is already in advanced stage development for their PD-1. The only other option is that ONCS is trying to develop their own PD-1, which would be even better. I don't see that happening though.
Thanks for letting me continue to blab on and on about this.
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Post by JHam on Jul 11, 2014 11:39:00 GMT
HeyNow's explanation of the science:
Two main reasons why a cancer patient's immune system would be compromised: 1. They are on cytotoxic chemotherapy or radiation which, although it has a therapeutic window, also kills healthy replicating cells, for example, our blood cells. So this lowers white blood cell count and makes the patient have a weak immune system, susceptible to infection, etc 2. If the person has a blood cancer like a lymphoma, the cancer cells proliferate and compromise the ability of the normal white blood cells to properly maintain and work.
Our immune system is our best natural defense against cancer and can stop a lot of cancers from even happening. Problem is, just like the cancer cells can mutate to take off the brakes and start to multiply uncontrollably, they can also mutate to "cloak" themselves from our immune system. By the time a full blown tumor grows out it has already learned to evade the host's immune system. Sometimes a little boost is enough to re stimulate an immune response. In this case they are trying to inject a piece of DNA that encodes a particular gene and when it finds its way into the cancer cells and starts expressing, the gene product, IL-12, is recognized by the immune cells and re stimulates an immune response against the tumor. That's the idea at least.
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Post by JHam on Jul 11, 2014 16:52:44 GMT
So check this out. This article just came out yesterday: Bristol-Myers, Merck Immune Therapy Promising in Cancer Trialswww.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-02/bristol-myers-merck-immune-therapy-primising-for-cancer.html?cmpid=yhooIt is a very good read and explains PD-1 very well. Here is the excerpt that is most important to anyone interested in ONCS: "While only a minority of patients on PD-1 experimental drugs respond to them, the difference between the immune therapy drugs and conventional cancer drugs is that the responses that do happen tend to be very long lasting, researchers at the conference said. By contrast, tumors often quickly grow resistant to existing drugs that that narrowly target one or two mutated proteins inside a tumor."
That's where ONCS comes in. They think they can turn non-responders into responders. "Then she joined a trial on an experimental drug from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. designed to boost the immune system against her tumor when used in combination with the company’s existing immune enhancing drug Yervoy. Within three weeks the pain started to subside, and within three months later the tumor disappeared. Her doctor at Yale Cancer Center in New Haven may stop therapy entirely in a few weeks, she said."So we know these companies are looking to combine their PD-1 therapies with immune enhancers. However... "While the trial found that the drug reduced the risk of relapse by 25 percent over a 2.7 year period compared to a placebo, patients on Yervoy had more side effects. More than half of patients on Yervoy discontinued the drug due to the side effects, and five patients died of drug-related toxicity."ONCS' ImmunoPulse has no side effects at all and has been proven to boost the immune system.
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Post by RLC on Jul 12, 2014 20:34:15 GMT
Thanks for sharing JHam! I'm definitely looking further into this company...
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Post by JHam on Jul 13, 2014 1:14:22 GMT
Thanks for sharing JHam! I'm definitely looking further into this company... Definitely carries the normal risks of a biotech working in a highly competitive arena, but I feel comfortable with the DD I have done to this point. Definitely not going "all in", but looking to have a nice medium position.
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Post by JHam on Jul 14, 2014 14:58:28 GMT
Added more today and plan on continuing to do so as this trickles down.
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Post by JHam on Jul 16, 2014 15:10:17 GMT
Added more today and plan on continuing to do so as this trickles down. ONCS has been getting hammered the past few days. I am not too surprised as I figured there would be some volatility with anticipation of when the trial data will be released and the timeline for the Phase IIb launch. I didn't add today, but still feel comfortable adding at these levels. I may wait for it to bottom out a bit though as it could be headed lower.
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Post by RLC on Jul 16, 2014 18:22:47 GMT
Added more today and plan on continuing to do so as this trickles down. ONCS has been getting hammered the past few days. I am not too surprised as I figured there would be some volatility with anticipation of when the trial data will be released and the timeline for the Phase IIb launch. I didn't add today, but still feel comfortable adding at these levels. I may wait for it to bottom out a bit though as it could be headed lower. So seeing it down this much today (-10%) I went ahead a acquired a small position @ .48 I haven't done nearly enough DD to feel comfortable placing a larger buy, but I really like what I see on the surface.
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Post by JHam on Jul 17, 2014 2:12:46 GMT
Welcome to the party RLC! I hope this one works out for you (us). There is definitely some risk involved in this one. At this point, we still have to see if ONCS can prove what they say they can do (turn PD-1 non-responders into responders). If it turns out that they can't do that, then we can both kiss our money goodbye. However if they can prove that, then I think there is some really good potential here. We are both in now before they have officially proven this so at this moment it is pretty high risk/high reward. Personally, I think they can do it, and the flurry of moves they made after realizing they can do it (hiring the lead developer of PD-1 therapies from Merck, Dr, Pierce, launching the new center in Seattle very expeditiously, and suddenly turning all of their focus to a PD-1 combined therapy trial), leads me to believe that they really think they are onto something. We'll see though. There are lots of companies out there that think they have the best potential treatment for cancer. I plan on adding more at these levels or if it drops a bit. The pps jumped from $.44 to $.97 in one month earlier this year (and from $.24 if you go back a few months before that). So I think this stock has the ability to spike on positive news. There will likely be some continued volatility in the interim though. For the record, my position is still relatively small and only represents 10% of my portfolio.
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Post by JHam on Jul 17, 2014 2:38:04 GMT
Sorry i just re-read my post and there were a few confusing sentences and spelling errors. Just corrected them. That's what happens when you try to write something on your iPad right after you wake up
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Post by RLC on Jul 17, 2014 13:23:10 GMT
Ya I'm definitely not looking at this as any guarantee, but agree that there's some incredibly compelling reasons to want to own some shares right now! Excited to be on board and thanks for all the info posts!
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Post by JHam on Jul 23, 2014 14:31:28 GMT
I added more today at $.52.
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Post by JHam on Jul 23, 2014 17:22:59 GMT
I added more today at $.52. Actually scratch that. I just got home and checked. My order filled at $.505.
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Post by RLC on Jul 25, 2014 14:46:54 GMT
Added another small amount at $.49 this morning.
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Post by JHam on Jul 25, 2014 14:53:33 GMT
Nice! I almost sold a chunk of BCLI to buy some more, but decided not to. Oh well.
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Post by JHam on Jul 28, 2014 16:33:52 GMT
Well, I finally sold a nice chunk of BCLI and use a portion of the profits to add some more ONCS today.
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Post by JHam on Jul 30, 2014 18:18:38 GMT
Call me crazy, but I added more today.
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Post by RLC on Jul 30, 2014 18:21:16 GMT
Call me crazy, but I added more today. If you're crazy than I am too, because I added more today as well
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Post by JHam on Jul 30, 2014 18:30:07 GMT
Call me crazy, but I added more today. If you're crazy than I am too, because I added more today as well Good to have some crazy company I still feel OK with averaging down. They have been extremely silent for a long time and we know there are a few potential news events on the horizon. I anticipate it continuing to trickle down until some of these events are announced.
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