Pharmaceutical filing citing FEBS Letters paper — Oncotelic Therapeutics, 2021-06-15
Oncotelic TherapeuticsOncotelic TherapeuticsOTC OTLC
Filings SEC · Quote Google cited a paper published in FEBS Letters 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 of 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, it submits a current report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, called 8-K. The item numbers of the document submitted by Oncotelic Therapeutics on 2021-06-15 were 8.01 Other Events · 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. The company cited a paper published in FEBS Letters in the press release attached to it. If the sentence citing the paper is translated verbatim, it reads as follows.
Serum Levels of the IgA Isotype Switch Factor TGF-β1 are Elevated in Patients with COVID-19 [published online ahead of print, 2021 May 7]. FEBS Lett. 2021;10.1002/1873-3468.14104.
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 answer it.
The scope of the paper mentioned in the abstract is limited to this
The paper title is Serum levels of the IgA isotype switch factor TGF‐β1 are elevated in patients with COVID‐19 and it was published in FEBS Letters on 2021-05-09. The authors' affiliations are Shenzhen University · Shenzhen Third People's Hospital · First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University · State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease. The summary published at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. What this article read was 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.
This study measured the concentration of the signaling molecule TGF-β1, which changes antibody types to IgA, in the blood of 153 patients with coronavirus disease 19, over time. The substance significantly increased during the early and middle stages of the illness and moved in parallel with the concentration of virus-specific IgA antibodies. In severe cases, it also correlated with severity scores. Combining these findings with genome research showing that genes activating this substance are linked to severity, the authors suggest that TGF-β1 may play an important role in coronavirus disease 19. As this is an observational study, the paper does not address whether blocking this substance would improve the illness.
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 excerpt cited by the company.
One month later, the stock price was in the bottom quarter of the sample.
The remaining return after subtracting the portion that moves with the entire market is called excess return. Dates are counted in trading days, meaning only days when the stock market is open. In calendar terms, 20 trading days is roughly one month. The excess return for 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 | −7.4% | The extent of movement before the filing |
| On the filing date | −1.4% | On the filing date or the first trading day thereafter |
| Cumulative over +1 to +5 trading days | −2.2% | One week |
| Cumulative over +1 to +20 trading days | −27.2% | 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 -27.2% in this case is within the bottom quarter, at the 16% 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% | −27.2% |
Half of the sample falls between the two central marks on the chart. One checks the chart to see whether this case falls within or outside the 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 applicable to future cases.
There are two additional cases where the same company cited papers in 8-K filings, which are included in the table below.
| Filing date | Journal of the cited paper | Excess return over one month |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-05-12 | BMJ | −15.1% |
| 2021-03-02 | bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) | +23.4% |
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. One can determine whether it was an earnings announcement or a contract by the item number. The specific event is read in the original text of each link.
- 2021-07-02 8-K Items 1.01, 3.02, 5.02 — Material contract execution · Unregistered securities offering · Officer/director changes
- 2021-07-20 8-K Item 5.02 — Changes in Directors and Executive Officers
- 2021-08-05 8-K Items 1.01,2.03,3.02,9.01 — Material contract execution · Debt occurrence · Unregistered securities sale · Financial statements and exhibits
What This Article Does Not Answer
This article based only on abstracts cannot answer what methods the paper used, what it reviewed, and how far it showed. How many times the paper cited by the company was cited afterward can be rechecked through OpenAlexOpenAlex
Data source · Website citation counts. 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 marked by item numbers such as performance, contracts, and officer 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 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 and limitations of the method.