Pharmaceutical regulatory filing citing a Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer paper — Galectin Therapeutics, 2021-05-17
Galectin TherapeuticsGalectin TherapeuticsNASDAQ GALT
Filings SEC · Quote Yahoo cited a paper published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer as the basis for its claims in a regulatory filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Regulator · Website. The company read the manner in which it wrote the paper and the actual scope presented in the paper in sequence. The stock price movement for one month after the filing was compared to past cases of the same type to determine its position. This is a retrospective judgment written after knowing the results. The paper was read only up to the abstract.
The disclosure wrote the paper in the press release like this
When a U.S. listed company has something to inform shareholders, the unscheduled report it files with the Securities and Exchange Commission is called 8-K. The item number of the document filed by Galectin Therapeutics on 2021-05-17 was 2.02 Earnings announcement · 9.01 Financial statements · Attached documents. The company cited a paper published in Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer in the press release attached to it. If you copy the sentence citing the paper verbatim from the original, it reads as follows.
“In our cancer, combination immunotherapy trial, results of the Phase 1 trial were published in the highest ranked fully open access peer-reviewed immunology journal.
What readers should look at first is where the company placed the paper in the press release. Next, they should determine whether the paper supports the entire company claim or only part of it. To answer the latter question, one must read the full paper. This article, which reads only the abstract, cannot answer that.
The scope of the paper discussed in the abstract is limited to this extent.
The paper title is Enhancing clinical and immunological effects of anti-PD-1 with belapectin, a galectin-3 inhibitor and it was published in Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer on 2021-04-01. The authors' affiliations are Cancer Institute (WIA) · Providence Portland Medical Center · Bioscience Research · Shimadzu (China). The summary published at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. What this article has read is only up to there. This paragraph was rewritten by a person after filtering a draft written by a machine reading the abstract through numerical comparison, so it is of a different grade from a full-text reading and a definitive judgment.
A phase 1 dose-escalation trial combined galactin-300,000,000 formulation veliparib with the immunotherapy pembrolizumab in patients with metastatic melanoma and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Seven of 14 melanoma patients and two of six head and neck cancer patients showed objective tumor shrinkage. No dose-limiting toxicity was observed across the tested dose range, and immune-related adverse events were fewer than expected with pembrolizumab monotherapy. The trial involved 20 patients without a control group, so this paper cannot conclude that combination therapy is better than monotherapy.
What the abstract does not answer remains in the full text and appendices. This article leaves gaps as gaps. Readers must compare the two citations above to determine which sentence in the abstract corresponds to the company's cited excerpt.
One month later, the stock price was in the bottom quarter of the sample.
The remaining return after subtracting the portion attributable to market movement is called excess return. Dates are counted as trading days, which are only the days the stock market is open. On a calendar, 20 trading days is roughly one month. The excess return on 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 | +8.1% | The extent of movement before the filing |
| On the filing date | +2.9% | On the filing date or the first trading day afterward |
| Cumulative over +1 to +5 trading days | −7.6% | One week |
| Cumulative over +1 to +20 trading days | −29.3% | 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 -29.3% in this case is within the bottom quarter, at the 13% position from the bottom among 142 samples.
| 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% | −29.3% |
Half of the sample falls between the two central marks on the chart. One checks whether this case lies within or outside the chart. The sample collects cases where U.S.-listed companies cited papers in 8-K filings over the past decade. The company itself is excluded from the sample. The numbers listed here are past facts, not rules applicable to future cases.
After the filing, the company issued such documents.
Three 8-K filings issued by the company after the filing date are listed by item number only. In 8-K filings without titles, item numbers indicate the type of content. Whether it was an earnings announcement or a contract can be determined by the number. The specific event is read in the original text via each link.
- 2021-07-09 8-K Item 8.01,9.01 — Other Events · Financial Statements · Exhibits
- 2021-07-26 8-K Item 7.01 — Reg FD Disclosure
- 2021-08-16 8-K Item 2.02,9.01 — Earnings Announcement · Financial Statements · Exhibits
What this article does not answer
This article, based only on abstracts, cannot answer what methods the paper used, what it reviewed, or how far it demonstrated. How many times the cited paper was referenced afterward can be rechecked via OpenAlexOpenAlex
Data source · Website citation counts. What will be examined next is whether the company's next 8-K cites the same paper again.
Glossary
- 8-K
- A voluntary report submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission when a U.S. listed company has something to inform shareholders. Types are indicated 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 the company alone by removing the portion where the market as a whole rises or falls.
- Trading day
- A date counting only the days the stock market is open. Since weekends and holidays are excluded, 20 trading days are approximately one calendar month.
- Sample and percentile
- A bundle of past cases of the same type is a sample, and the position 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
- A summary 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 paper, one cannot know the details or limitations of the method.