Pharmaceutical regulatory filing citing a bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) paper — Oncotelic Therapeutics, 2021-03-02
Oncotelic TherapeuticsOncotelic TherapeuticsOTC OTLC
Filings SEC · Quote Google 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 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 report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is called 8-K. The item numbers of the document filed by Oncotelic Therapeutics on 2021-03-02 were 8.01 Other Events · 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. The company cited a paper published in bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) in the attached press release. The sentence citing the paper, copied verbatim from the original, is as follows.
Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery. 2021. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2021.649532/abstract 3) Naira, M.S., Huang, Y., Fidock, D.A.,Polyak, S.J., Wagonerd, J.,Towlere, M.J., Weatherse, P.J.
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 provide an answer.
The scope of the paper mentioned in the abstract is limited to this.
The paper title is Repurposing Anti-Malaria Phytomedicine Artemisinin as a COVID-19 Drug and it was published in bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) on 2021-03-19. The authors' affiliations are unconfirmed. The summary published at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. This article read only up to there. This paragraph was rewritten by a person after filtering a draft written by a machine comparing numbers, so it is of a different grade from a full-text reading and a verified reading.
This article is a proposal-style paper published on bioRxiv, which does not publish peer-reviewed papers but preprints. It compiled existing reports that the malaria drug artemisinin blocks both the initial stage where the virus attaches to and enters the cell and the stage after entry where it replicates, and also reduces inflammatory substances. Based on this, it hypothesized that administering it early to mild COVID-19 patients could prevent deterioration. The nature of this document is that it contains no new experimental results but is a paper that outlines a hypothesis.
The abstract does not answer; it remains in the main text and the appendix. This article, which does not go there, leaves the blank as it is. Readers compare the two citations above to determine which sentence in the abstract corresponds to the excerpt cited by the company.
A month later, the stock price was within the top quarter of the sample.
The excess return is the portion of the return that remains after subtracting the part that moves with the entire market. The date is recorded 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 on the day of the regulatory 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 | −13.0% | The extent to which it had already moved before the filing |
| regulatory filing day | −14.9% | filing day or the first trading day thereafter |
| cumulative +1~+5 trading days | −10.7% | one week |
| cumulative +1~+20 trading days | +23.4% | 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 +23.4% in this case is in the top quarter, corresponding to the 92% position from the bottom among 142 cases in the sample.
| 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% | +18.7% | +23.4% |
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 of that range. The sample consists of 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 to apply to future cases.
The same company had two additional instances where papers were mentioned in 8-K filings, which are included in the table below.
| Filing date | The journal of the mentioned paper | Excess return for one month |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-05-12 | BMJ | −15.1% |
| 2021-06-15 | FEBS Letters | −27.2% |
After the filing, the company issued this document
Three 8-K filings issued by the company after the filing date are listed with only item numbers. 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 details of what occurred can be read in the original text via each link.
- 2021-03-26 8-K Item 1.01,3.02,9.01 — Material contract execution · Unregistered securities sale · Financial statements · Exhibits
- 2021-03-30 8-K Item 8.01,9.01 — Other events · Financial statements · Exhibits
- 2021-04-21 8-K Item 8.01, 9.01 — Other Events · Financial Statements · Exhibits
What This Article Does Not Answer
This article, which reads only abstracts, cannot answer how the paper re-examined what method and showed up to where. How often 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 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when a listed company has something to inform shareholders. The type is indicated by item numbers such as performance, 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 count of 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, details and limitations of the method cannot be known.