KK - Thank you. I will give you a little of my history with this company. Bought my first 300 shrs in early fall of 2006. At the time RVX was doing or just completed monkey trials and CEPT's were just beginning to come on strong. The day Pfizer got word that their Torceptapid? trial got halted it took about 25 billion (literally) off of their market cap within 20 minutes or so. RVX shares got clipped a little but the hope was wonderful and the famous words from DM were coined, you don't know what's in this envelope. RVX ran up to $29.50 and then back down to around $7 all in one week.

The first RVX AGM that I ever went to was after that wild ride. My stakes were very small and I was roughly even. After the AGM there were a number of conversations with different members of the company and I happened to be in the group that had gathered around Dr Normand Wong. I knew very little about the company, drug or science at the time. Dr Wongs words at that time, although I can't remember them exactly still stay with me. CEPT's as a class of drugs will have a very hard time having success. There was a long scientific explanation of why they likely wouldn't work that went totally over my head. Today, 10 years later with many thousands more shares after reading close to 400 articles, studies and papers it is no surprise to me that CEPT's as a class of drug still do not work and likely never will. 

I can't remember the trial name where we did not achieve the primary end point of X% increase of HDL but an executive of Merk said in an interview something like, I wouldn't take that drug it increases liver ALTS, their drug only increased HDL by 12%, ours (aneceptrapid?) increased HDL by 128%. Back to another AGM I went, again listened to a conversation that Dr Wong was having with a group of brokers. After the conversation was over I must have had that deer in the headlights look on my face as the broker I used at the time said to me I will try to put it in terms you will understand, CEPT's increase HDL but don't get rid of it. Our drug increases HDL a little and then allows our body to get rid of it. Think of CEPT's as garbage trucks going through the city picking up garbage and going to the dump to empty their load only to find the gates closed so they just sit outside the dump with their engines idoling, sooner or later the toxicity of the fumes from the I doling trucks is going to kill the operators. RVX's drug is like having one garbage truck go through an area of the city, going to the dump, emptying the load going back filling up again, going back to the dump, emptying again....wash rinse replete. With RVX's drug there is very little toxicity, hence much less problems. I know now that that was a very simplistic explanation but it was something I could understand.

The point of the story, CEPT's are the worst example of a drug class study to follow. Everything that Dr Wong pointed out 10 years ago has now come to fruition. All but one of the CEPT programs have been killed. Merk is the only one that hasn't thrown in the towel. From the charts in the link that BDAZ put up yesterday, visually there is vertually no difference between standard of care and the CEPTs used in the charts with a very small RRR. 

Can someone point me in the direction of  finding averages of companies that get through Futility Studies and then go on to successful trials? This CEPT class of drug seems to me to be the worst example to use even though it is a good reality check.

tada