Targeted failure of the week. Post No 109 and 110. Vintafolide and stem cell business.

The idea with vintafolide is extremely sexy: From wiki: Vintafolide is a derivative of the anti-mitotic chemotherapy drug vinblastine^[1] in which it is chemically linked to folic acid. Vintafolide was designed to deliver the toxic vinblastine group using folate targeting to cancer cells that overexpress the folic acid receptor.^[2] Vintafolide is being studied for treatment of late-stage ovarian cancer and mid-stage non-small cell lung cancer.

And guess what? Failure... Why? The sexy theory is not enough for the drug to be effective or, in other words, the theory is not ontologically correct.

Endocyte Inc. (NASDAQ:ECYT) fell $3.28 (24%) to $10.50 on Friday after announcing that a DSMB said vintafolide monotherapy is unlikely to be superior to docetaxel on the primary progression-free survival (PFS) endpoint in the Phase IIb TARGET trial for second-line treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The trial is evaluating vintafolide as monotherapy and in combination with docetaxel vs. docetaxel alone. Top-line data from the trial are expected in early 2014.

See also here.

The same s..t is with stem cell business (and I guess it is the beginning ot the bubble burst): Osiris exits stem cell business, sells unit to Mesoblast in $100M deal