Pharmaceutical filing citing a European Journal of Cancer paper — Moleculin Biotech, 2023-03-09
Moleculin BiotechMoleculin BiotechNASDAQ MBRX
Filings SEC · Quote Yahoo cited a paper published in the European Journal of Cancer in a 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 manner in which it wrote the paper and the actual scope presented in the paper in sequence. It recorded where the stock price movement over the following month compared to past cases of the same type. This is a hindsight 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, it submits a current report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, called 8-K. The item number of the document submitted by Moleculin Biotech on 2023-03-09 was 7.01 Reg FD disclosure · 9.01 financial statements · attached documents. The company cited a paper published in European Journal 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.
The manuscript titled, “ Anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity – are we about to clear this hurdle? 1 ,” was published in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Cancer . The published manuscript discusses clinically evaluated doxorubicin analogs that were developed as potentially non-cardiotoxic anticancer agents and includes Annamycin.
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 a part of it. To answer the latter question, one must read the full paper. This article, which reads only the abstract, cannot answer it.
The scope of the paper mentioned in the abstract is up to this point.
The paper title is Anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity — are we about to clear this hurdle? and it was published in European Journal of Cancer on 2023-02-24. The authors' affiliations are LMU Klinikum · Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München · The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. 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 out a draft written by a machine reading the abstract, so it is a different grade from a full-text reading and a definitive judgment.
This article is a review summarizing the issue of anthracycline anticancer drugs damaging the heart, not an experimental paper. It noted that this class of drugs has significantly increased survival in various cancers, but one in three patients may die due to long-term cardiac toxicity. The main mechanisms cited are reactive oxygen species and topoisomerase II beta inhibition. Preventive strategies include combination with heart drugs, iron chelators, and the development of new derivatives with lower cardiac toxicity. Whether any of the new derivatives reviewed by the authors are actually better is the review's opinion, not the results of comparative trials.
What the abstract does not answer remains in the full text and appendices. This article leaves the gaps as they are. Readers must compare the two citations above to determine which sentence in the abstract the company cited.
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 entire market is called excess return. Dates are counted only on days the stock market is open, referred to as trading days. In terms of the calendar, 20 trading days is roughly a month. The excess return on the day of the filing and for the following month are listed in the table below.
| Period | Excess return relative to the market | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 5 trading days before the filing | +1.8% | The extent of movement before the filing |
| On the filing date | −2.8% | On the filing date or the first trading day thereafter |
| Cumulative over +1 to +5 trading days | −14.5% | One week |
| Cumulative over +1 to +20 trading days | −18.2% | 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 -18.2% in this case is within the bottom 30% of the 142 samples, and within 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% | −18.2% |
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 historical facts, not rules applicable to future cases.
There is one additional case where the same company cited a paper in an 8-K, and it is included in the table below.
| Filing date | Academic journal of the cited paper | Excess return over one month |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-06-16 | Nature | +0.7% |
Documents issued by the company after the filing
Only item numbers are listed for the three 8-K filings issued by the company after the filing date. In 8-K filings without titles, item numbers indicate the type of content. Whether it was an earnings announcement or a contract can be identified by the item number. The specific event is read in the original text of each link.
- 2023-03-13 8-K Item 7.01, 9.01 — Reg FD disclosure · Financial statements · Attached documents
- 2023-03-15 8-K Item 7.01, 9.01 — Reg FD disclosure · financial statements · exhibits
- 2023-03-22 8-K Item 7.01, 9.01 — Reg FD disclosure · financial statements · exhibits
What this article does not answer
This article, which reads only abstracts, cannot answer how the paper reviewed what methods, what it re-examined, and how far it showed. How many times the paper cited by the company has been cited afterward can be rechecked 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.
Explanation of terms
- 8-K
- A voluntary report submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission when a U.S. listed company has something to inform shareholders. The type is indicated by item numbers such as earnings, contracts, and executive changes. All events in this article come from this document.
- Excess return
- The remainder obtained by subtracting the market's overall return from the stock's return. It is used to observe the company's unique movement after removing the portion attributable to the market's collective rise or fall.
- Trading day
- A date counting only the days when the stock market is open. Since weekends and holidays are excluded, 20 trading days correspond to 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 within it 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 text, one cannot know the details or limitations of the method.