Yes, I recall Ken doing a number of presentations. Good to have a business development person presenting and I would imagine he has more credibility than Don.

Well we're into autumn. Don has 3 months maximum to cut a deal. Perhaps the silence, as irritating as it is, is a good thing.

From what I recall, Hepalink required a vote. Probably not a big deal even if Don announced a deal on Dec 26th. I think the deadline would be moved to accomodate the deal unless KD wants to pounce but history does not support that.

So the silence at both RVX and Zenith is interesting. The variance in information regarding the futility analysis has me concerned. As I posted previously my concern re the "statistical" considerations is because this suggests that the committee members may see some positive effect of apabetalone on 3 point MACE the evidence to date implies that the statistical base (sample size of the # of MACE events) may be too small to pick up the effect at a reasonable probablity level to judge if the trial should continue from an efficacy perspective. This may imply that the RRR may be modest at best???????????? based on the data to date.

While I've stated before that we know nothing about apabetlone and 3 point MACE what we do have in this trial is a highly targetted patient population in terms of CVD, DM and low HDL and this should enhance the odds for apabetalone (I hope). We also now have the positive vote of FDA approval.

On the Zenith side the silence tells me that while they are probably learning significant amounts of information they do not have the magic bullet in zen3694. I hope I am wrong. (apologies for mentioning Zenith on this sight).

Going back to Sept of 2013 when the post hoc analysis of apabetalone were published I was extremely positive about rvx-208/apabetalone. I thought AZ would jump in with a buy offer OR any other BP would jump in to upstage AZ. The rousuvastatin + apabetalone patent reinforced my positive outlook. Of course this did not happen. The reasons could be many including lack of scientific proof and the price Don wants.

Don's usual bravado or at least off the cuff remarks about "a deal" over the years has eroded my confidence. KD drew the line in the sand. Don can't bluff anymore.

The good news is that we will soon see!

Finally, I still believe that this compound (apabetalone) and more importantly, the underlying epigenetic science, are potential breakthroughs scientifically. CRSPR (gene splicing) has not yet had a victory. Perhaps developing genetic software (epigenetics) is a big part of the solution.

Aologies for the rambling. Just had to get stuff out of my head.

GLTA

Toinv