Scancell Holdings (LON: SCLP) shares are up 10% today on hte announcement that the cancer treatment continues not to fail. Which is the correct way around to put this. We shouldn;t think of a treatment or drug succeeding, not until we gain full FDA (or equivalent) per mission for it to be marketed. The best way to think of this is “not failed yet”. For there are three distinct levels of testing that have to be gone through. The vast majority of drugs and or treatments do fail at one stage of the other.
With that in mind, the announcement: “Scancell Holdings plc (AIM: SCLP), the developer of novel immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and infectious disease, announces today it has two further responders on the SCOPE study, bringing the number of responders to 11 out of 13 patients. This is an objective response rate (ORR) of 85%. These responses have been verified in nine patients with a second scan at 19 weeks. Significantly, one of the patients has achieved a complete response following treatment. The two recent responders are scheduled to have their response confirmed in a subsequent scan. The SCOPE trial has now successfully transitioned into the second stage, which will recruit a further 27 patients (for a total of 43).”
That’s why everything is done in stages. Failure at any point means the end of the attempt. So, carve the entire process up into pieces, do each sequentially and keep going until failure - or success of course.
Scancell Holdings share price from Google Finance
We’ve talked before of Scancell Holdings: “Scancell Holdings (LON: SCLP) shares are down 5% this morning. This isn’t their fault and it seems almost unkind that SCLP shares have fallen as a result of this technical problem. But if it’s a problem that lasts for a couple of weeks - of which we’ve no indication as yet - then this could be more serious. As well as provide an interesting little speculative opportunity.” That turned ut to be the auditor just asking for a little more time and of no great import.
There’s also this about SCLP: “Scancell Holdings (LON: SCLP) (OTCPK: SCNLF) shares are up 25% today. The SCLP share price has jumped on the announcement of results about their melanoma treatment. Simply because medical testing does take many years, and has many potential failure points, we perhaps shouldn’t read to much into this. But it is a valuation point, this is value additive as well. It’s is a brick in that necessary wall of evidence to get to a saleable product.”
That was two months or so back and was the first report out about the testing being updated today. So far at least it looks as if the treatment is going to work - but as we say above, this is only true until either failure or full approval.
