Pharmaceutical filing citing BMJ paper — Oncotelic Therapeutics, 2020-05-12
Oncotelic TherapeuticsOncotelic TherapeuticsOTC OTLC
Filings SEC · Quote Google cited a paper published in the BMJ in its regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Regulator · Website as a basis for its claims. The company read the manner in which it wrote the paper and the actual scope the paper demonstrated, in order. The stock price movement over one month following the filing was compared to past cases of the same type, and the position was noted. 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, it files a current report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, called 8-K. The item numbers of the document filed by Oncotelic Therapeutics on 2020-05-12 were 8.01 Other Events · 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. The company cited a paper published in BMJ in the attached press release. The sentence citing the paper, copied verbatim from the original, is as follows.
Vuong Trieu, CEO of Mateon Therapeutics, Inc. (the “Company”), wrote a response to Remdesivir in covid-19. BMJ 2020; 369 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1610 (Published 22 April 2020): BMJ 2020;369:m1610.
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 only read the abstract, cannot provide an answer.
The scope of the paper discussed in the abstract ends here.
The paper title is Remdesivir in covid-19 and it was published in BMJ on 2020-04-22. The authors are affiliated with the University of Birmingham and the University of Oxford. The summary at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. This article only read up to that point. The paragraph was rewritten by a person after filtering a draft written by a machine through numerical comparison, so it is of a different grade than a full-text reading and original judgment.
This article is an editorial in the medical journal BMJ, not a research paper. Only a one-line summary is included instead of an abstract. It says that remdesivir is a promising drug, but time should not be spent on uncontrolled observations. It is the editor's argument that answers must come from randomized controlled trials. It is not an article containing new experimental results.
What the abstract does not answer remains in the full text and appendix. This article, which did not go beyond that, leaves the blanks as they are. Readers should compare the two citations above to determine which sentence in the abstract corresponds to the part cited by the company.
A month later, the stock price was within the middle half of the sample.
The return remaining 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 a calendar, 20 trading days are approximately one month. The excess return for the day of the regulatory filing and the following one month in this example are listed in the table below.
| Period | Excess return relative to the market | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 5 trading days before the filing | −14.5% | The extent already moved before the filing |
| Day of the filing | +1.8% | Day of the filing or the first trading day after |
| +1~+5 trading days cumulative | −6.6% | One week |
| +1~+20 trading days cumulative | −15.1% | 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 -15.1% in this case is within the bottom 35% of the 142 samples, placing it in the lower half.
| Sample scale (20 trading days) | Tenth from the bottom | Fourth from the bottom | Median | Upper 25% | Upper 10% | This case |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Excess return | −31.9% | −20.1% | −6.9% | +5.5% | +19.5% | −15.1% |
Half of the sample falls between the two middle marks in the table. Check the table to see whether this case falls inside or outside that range. The sample consists of 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 to apply to future cases.
There are two additional cases where the same company cited papers in 8-K filings, and they are included together in the table below.
| Disclosure date | the journal of the paper | one month excess return |
|---|---|---|
| 2021-03-02 | bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) | +23.4% |
| 2021-06-15 | FEBS Letters | −27.2% |
after the filing, the company issued such documents
after the filing date, the company issued three 8-K filings. Here, only the item numbers are listed. In 8-K filings without titles, the item numbers indicate 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.
- 2020-05-14 8-K Item 5.02 — Officer and Director Changes
- 2020-06-12 8-K Items 8.01,9.01 — Other Events · Financial Statements · Attached Documents
- 2020-06-16 8-K Items 1.01,8.01,9.01 — Material Contract Execution · Other Events · Financial Statements · Attached Documents
what this article did not answer
This article, which reads only abstracts, cannot answer what method the paper used, what it showed, and to what extent. How many times the paper cited by the company was cited afterward can be rechecked by the OpenAlexOpenAlex
Data source · Website citation count. The next thing to see is whether the company's next 8-K again cites the same paper.
Glossary
- 8-K
- A spontaneous 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 unique to this company by removing the portion where the market as a whole rose or fell.
- Trading day
- A date counting only the days when 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 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
- 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.