How Promising Is It? Notes From The VRX496 Conference Call

[Peter Staley]

I just blogged about this first potential gene therapy treatment for HIV:



How Promising Is It? Notes From The VRX496 Conference Call (the first gene therapy for HIV)
http://blogs.poz.com/peter/archives/2008/08/how_promising_i.html

If you comment here, please cut & paste your comments after my blog post as well.

Thanks!

Peter

[Peter Staley]

FYI -- VIRxSYS's Executive Vice President for Scientific and Clinical Affairs, Dr. Gerard J. McGarrity, posted a lengthy defense of their gene-therapy research effort in my blog.

You can read it here:
http://blogs.poz.com/peter/archives/2008/08/how_promising_i.html#comment-5750

[leit]

"Mr. Jefferys does not find the argument regarding viral load changes convincing, and he is entitled to his opinion. However, we believe that we did not see viral load changes in our early clinical studies because the believed mechanism of action for VRX496 the targeting and disruption of the env gene, not the gag gene. Current viral load tests measure the gag gene. Our current data suggest that VRX496 does not directly impact on gag or gag counts, but does impact on env sequencing. Therefore, viral load counts based on gag assays do not directly measure counts based on our target sequence."

And what about CD4???

"Mr. Jefferys comments that a lot has been extrapolated from 'very limited data'"

Mr. Jefferys is completely right: VRX496 data are only a big mess.

"we continue to accumulate promising data"

Uh, "promising", the evergreen magic word! LOL!!!

"Finally, our company has historically been cautious about the promotion of results of our early-stage trials"

ROTFL!

[freewillie99]

FYI -- VIRxSYS's Executive Vice President for Scientific and Clinical Affairs, Dr. Gerard J. McGarrity, posted a lengthy defense of their gene-therapy research effort in my blog.

Peter,

What did you think of his post?