Cabel - I also reread tuneup's post from June 2018. It appears that there is zero value attached to either the CKD or cognitive improvement potential for apabetalone in his writing even though there is apparently "stunning and unheard of" results for these other two indications. For the purpose of this valuation method how would one calculate an ICER or NNT with neither of the conditions above having an event related cost. These are progressive conditions not events. On the CKD side if Apabetalone slows the progression of CKD by 5 to 10 years before dialysis is required, over those periods of time the costs per patient may be reduced by $425k to $850k. How long before the patient progresses to stage3 or stage4 CKD would they need to start taking ABL before a measurable difference could be determined? The potential savings to National medical schemes world wide is astronomical.

The same can be said for cognitive function. At some point patients are no longer able to care for themselves because of this condition. How long do they normally live in this state with 24/7 care? And at what cost per year? I have not heard or seen any hard numbers but it seems reasonable to assume somewhere between $50k and $100k per year. For the sake of argument lets just say the annual cost to care for this group is $75k per patient per year. In the US alone there are over 5 million patients currently that fit this bill and that number is growing at over 20% per year. That's $37.5 billion per year. Again how is an ICER or NNT used in the calculation of a progressive disease? How many more years would the patient be able to live on their own before requiring 24/7 care?

From tuneup's post a value of CAD 26 to CAD 79 was derived using only the NNT for CVD events. The annual savings to the insurers and National medical schemes could be far far greater for anywhere from a year to many years if the patients with either of these medical issues being able to delay more costly care for a number of years by these "stunning and unheard of" results that tunup referred to.

We have seen the value of Biogen swing over $19 billion in market cap over just the potential of their Alzheimer's program in the last 10 months. When you add the $6 to $15 billion for our CVD potential and then add something greater than that for the CKD potential the number gets over US $30 billion really quick.

That kind of makes the highest guess in our little contest seem low.

Guess I'm just trying to justify the validity of that unicorn showing up.

All IMO, dyodd.

Have a great weekend.

tada