ATHX
Buen artículo en seeking, pero con alguna imprecisión, no sé si consciente e inconsciente. Lo mejor es el comentario que reproduzco de Logribel Stocks. Puede pegar un buen estirón, pero como ya comenté hace unos días, yo no confío en unos resultados positivos.
topline results would be presented at a leading stroke conference in Europe taking place April 17-19th
Hoy participa en el 12th annual BIO Asia International symposium to be held on March 25, 2015 at the Grand Hyatt, Tokyo, Japan. Como normalmente este tipo de presentaciones suelen decepcionar a los inversores por no presentar nada nuevo, puede dar oportunidad de entrada.
Nice long and detailed article. I have been expecting Athersys' phase 2 results in ischemic stroke since the (unexpected) announcement of the end of recruitment, as they will likely have a significant impact on the company and on similar stem cell biotechs.
However, I believe that you should you be more critical of company's PR. For example, MAPCs and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are indeed considered to be two different type of stem cells, but they are very close in terms of mechanism of action and expansion properties.
http://bit.ly/1rYl32E
The principal therapeutic mechanism of action of MSCs is through immunomodulation just like MAPCs, and MPCs can be either allogeneic or autologous according to the method of choice -- you seem to imply that MAPCs are "superior" to MPCs because those are bound to be autologous, which is obviously incorrect. Allogeneic adipose-derived MSCs are also thought to be immunoprivileged and they can be stored (frozen) and expanded similarly to MAPCs.
http://1.usa.gov/1Cw6dJ4
So, starting from there, other companies also have promising technologies that are similar to Athersys' and could be useful in treating strokes. For example, TiGenix has an allogeneic adipose-derived MSC platform which has not yet been officially tested in ischemic stroke, although there exists at least one ongoing investigator-initiated trial in this indication:
http://1.usa.gov/1DVKWJQ
Besides, autologous MSC treatments for ischemic stroke have been tested by investigators as far back as 2010 with encouraging results:
http://1.usa.gov/1DVKUSb
So, to sum things up, I am rather optimistic about Athersys' chances of success in ischemic stroke for the same reasons you detail in your article (although I believe that your 50% probability is reasonable as there is no available efficacy data to this date), and I believe that good results would reflect positively on other stem cell companies with similar technologies.
However, I have doubts on Athersys' ability to design proper clinical trials as on the failed UC trial, I believe that there's only one thing to be said: sadly, very bad trial design... As you write, expecting that one single dose of MAPCs could reverse a long standing and refractory disease was foolish and a terrible waste of (shareholder's) money. I sincerely hope that this ongoing stroke trial was more thoroughly designed.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3022366-athersys-an-ischemic-stroke-holy-grail-find-out-in-less-than-a-month
«Después de nada, o después de todo/ supe que todo no era más que nada.»