Pharmaceutical filing citing a bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) paper — Aldeyra Therapeutics, 2020-05-20
Aldeyra TherapeuticsAldeyra TherapeuticsNASDAQ ALDX
Filings SEC · Quote Yahoo cited a paper published in bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) in its regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Regulator · Website as the basis for its claims. The company read the way it wrote the paper and the actual scope the paper demonstrated, in order. The stock price movement for one month after the filing was compared to past cases of the same type, and the position was written accordingly. This is a retrospective judgment written after knowing the results. The paper was read only up to the abstract.
The disclosure is written in the press release as follows:
When a U.S. listed company has an event to inform shareholders, it files a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Aldeyra Therapeutics filed this document on 2020-05-20, with item numbers 7.01 Reg FD disclosure · 8.01 Other Events · 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. The company cited a paper published in bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) in the press release attached to it. The sentence citing the paper, translated verbatim, is as follows.
Future Virology 2018; 13(2): 119-127. 2 Bulk and single-cell gene expression profiling of SARS-CoV-2 infected human cell lines identifies molecular targets for therapeutic intervention. BioRxiv 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.05.079194.
The reader should first check where the company placed the paper in the press release. Next, they should determine whether the paper supports the entire company claim or only a part of it. To answer the latter question, one must read the full paper. This article, which has only read the abstract, cannot provide an answer to that.
The scope of the paper discussed in the abstract is limited to this.
The paper's title is Bulk and single-cell gene expression profiling of SARS-CoV-2 infected human cell lines identifies molecular targets for therapeutic intervention, and it was published in bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) on 2020-05-05. The authors are affiliated with Max Delbrück Center · Berlin Institute of Health at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin · Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin · Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The summary at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. This article has read only up to that point. This paragraph was written by a person after filtering a draft written by a machine through numerical comparison; it is of a different grade than a full reading of the paper.
This article is a cell experiment published on bioRxiv, a preprint server. It infected three human cell lines with SARS virus and SARS-CoV-2 virus, respectively, and analyzed how gene expression changed at both the whole and single-cell level. Both viruses significantly increased small RNA involved in inflammation and immunity. Since this is a cell experiment, whether the same events occur in patients is beyond the scope of this paper.
What the abstract does not answer remains in the full text and appendices. This article leaves those gaps as they are. Readers should compare the two citations above to determine which sentence in the abstract corresponds to the citation provided by the company.
One month later, the stock price was within the middle half of the sample.
The remaining return after subtracting the portion that moves with the overall market is called excess return. The date is written as trading day, counting only the days the stock market is open. In terms of the calendar, 20 trading days are approximately one month. The excess return for the day of the regulatory filing and the following month are listed in the table below.
| Period | Excess return relative to the market | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Five trading days before the filing | +13.4% | The extent of movement before the filing |
| On the day of the filing | +11.1% | On the filing day or the first trading day after |
| Accumulated over +1 to +5 trading days | +14.7% | One week |
| Cumulative +1~+20 trading days | −9.4% | One month |
A bundle of past cases of the same type is called a sample. The position counted from the bottom is expressed as a percentile. The one-month excess return of −9.4% in this case is within the bottom 46% of the 142 cases in the sample, placing it in the lower half.
| Sample scale (20 trading days) | Tenth from the bottom | Fourth from the bottom | median | top 25% | top 10% | This case |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Excess return | −31.9% | −20.1% | −6.9% | +5.5% | +19.5% | −9.4% |
Half of the sample falls between the two marks in the middle of the table. One checks from the table whether this case is inside or outside. The sample collects cases where U.S. listed companies wrote papers in 8-K over the past ten years. The company itself is excluded from the sample. The numbers written here are past facts, not rules to apply to the next case.
After the disclosure, the company issued such documents
After the disclosure date, the company issued three 8-K filings, listed only by item numbers. In 8-K filings without titles, the item number indicates the type of content. One can determine whether it was an earnings announcement or a contract based on that number. What exactly occurred is read in the original text of each link.
- 2020-06-04 8-K Item 8.01, 9.01 — Other Events · Financial Statements · Exhibits
- 2020-06-12 8-K Item 5.07 — Results of the Shareholders' Meeting
- 2020-07-07 8-K Item 8.01, 9.01 — Other Events · Financial Statements · Exhibits
What This Article Does Not Answer
This article, which reads only the abstract, cannot answer what method the paper used, what it reviewed, and how far it showed. How many times the paper cited by the company has been cited afterward can be checked again through the OpenAlexOpenAlex
Data source · Website citation count. What will be seen next is whether the company's next 8-K again cites the same paper.
Glossary
- 8-K
- A voluntary report submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission when a U.S. listed company has something to inform shareholders. It is categorized by item numbers such as earnings, contracts, and executive changes. All events in this article come from this document.
- Excess return
- The remainder after subtracting the overall market return from the stock return. It is used to see the movement of this company alone, excluding the part where the market as a whole rises or falls.
- Trading day
- A date counting only days when the stock market is open. Since weekends and holidays are excluded, 20 trading days correspond to roughly one calendar month.
- Sample and percentile
- A bundle of past cases of the same type is the sample, and the position counted from the bottom is expressed as a percentile. A percentile of 10 means that nine out of ten cases performed better than this case.
- Abstract
- An abstract is placed at the beginning of a paper. The author writes in a few sentences what was done, how it was done, and what results were obtained. Without reading the full text, one cannot know the details or limitations of the methods.