Biological product filing citing a bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) paper — Novavax, 2020-09-10
In a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Regulator · Website, NovavaxNovavaxNASDAQ NVAX
Filings SEC · Quote Yahoo cited a paper published on bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) as the basis for its claims. The company read the way it wrote the paper and the actual scope of 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 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 report submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission is called 8-K. The item numbers of the document submitted by Novavax on 2020-09-10 were 7.01 Reg FD public · 9.01 financial statements · attached documents. The company cited the paper published in bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) in the attached press release. If the sentence citing the paper is copied verbatim, it reads as follows.
The sentence citing the paper in the press release could not be automatically found. Confirm it from the original link. Do not replace it with another paragraph.
What readers see first is where the company placed the paper in the press release. Next is to 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 only read the abstract, cannot answer that.
The scope of the paper mentioned in the abstract is up to here.
The paper title is NVX-CoV2373 vaccine protects cynomolgus macaque upper and lower airways against SARS-CoV-2 challenge and it was published in bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) on 2020-08-19. The authors' affiliations are MACOM (United States) · Novavax (United States) · University of Maryland, Baltimore · University of Baltimore. The summary published at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. This article only read up to there. This paragraph was rewritten by a person after filtering a draft written by a machine reading the abstract by numerical comparison, so it is a different grade from the original full-text reading.
This article is a preprint published on bioRxiv, a platform for uploading manuscripts before peer review. The researchers vaccinated monkeys with a candidate vaccine made by fixing the surface protein of the coronavirus into its pre-infection shape, combined with an immune booster. The vaccinated monkeys produced antibodies that neutralized the virus and blocked its attachment to human cell receptors. When the virus was introduced into the nose and airways, both upper and lower respiratory infections and lung disease were prevented. However, whether the same results occur in humans is beyond the scope of this monkey study.
The questions left unanswered by the abstract remain in the full text and appendices. This article leaves those gaps as they are. Readers must compare the two citations above to determine which sentence in the abstract corresponds to the statement cited by the company.
One month later, the stock price was within the top quarter of the sample.
The portion of the return that remains after subtracting the part that moves with the overall market is called excess return. Dates are counted only on days when the stock market is open, referred to as trading days. In terms of a calendar, 20 trading days is approximately one month. The excess return on the day of the announcement and for the following month is presented in the table below.
| Period | Excess return relative to the market | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 5 trading days before the announcement | −11.7% | The extent of movement before the filing |
| On the filing date | +3.0% | On the filing date or the first trading day afterward |
| Cumulative over +1 to +5 trading days | +22.8% | One week |
| Cumulative over +1 to +20 trading days | +13.6% | 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 +13.6% in this case is in the top quarter, corresponding to the 86% 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% | −7.4% | +5.5% | +19.5% | +13.6% |
Half of the sample falls between the two central marks on the chart. One checks the chart to see whether this case lies within or outside the range. The sample collects cases where U.S. listed companies cited papers in 8-K filings over the past ten years. 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.
| Disclosure date | Journal of the cited paper | Excess return over one month |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-03-04 | Journal of Medical Economics | −20.2% |
Documents issued by the company after the disclosure
After the disclosure date, the company issued three 8-K filings. Only the item numbers are listed. In 8-K filings without titles, the item number indicates the type of content. Whether it was an earnings announcement or a contract can be identified by the number. The specific event is read in the original text of each link.
- 2020-09-15 8-K Item 1.01 — Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement
- 2020-10-28 8-K Item 1.01 — Material Contract Execution
- 2020-11-03 8-K Item 5.02,9.01 — Officer·Director Changes · Financial Statements·Attached Documents
What This Article Does Not Answer
This article, which reads only abstracts, cannot answer how the paper reviewed what methods, what it reevaluated, and how far it demonstrated. How many times the paper cited by the company was cited afterward can be verified 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 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when a listed company has something to inform shareholders. Categories are indicated by item numbers such as earnings, contracts, and officer changes. All events in this article are derived 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 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, the details and limitations of the method cannot be known.