Dr. Kausik Ray is the chair of the BETonMACE Clinical Steering Committee (CSC). None of the CSC are members of the BETonMACE DSMB. That would be an obvious conflict of interest. It is unlikely that any of the other speakers at this years ESC symposium (Jorge Plutzky, Erik Stroes, Ulrich Laufs) are on the BETonMACE DSMB. In my opinion, the DSMB will communicate the results of the SSRA and an 8th DSMB report to the CSC and Resverlogix prior to the top-line data readout. I would expect the results/decisions of the SSRA and 8th DSMB report to be subsequently press released to the general public. However, I do not expect any detailed safety info to be included in the 8th report and would expect similar language as has appeared in the previous 7 DMSB reports. Something might come up that the DSMB sees in the data, but doubtful in my opinion since DSMB hasn't mentioned anything in previous 7 reports. The SSRA wouldn't be concerned with safety; more with statistics surrounding sample size. 

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