Pharmaceutical filing citing a Journal of Neuroinflammation paper — Vaccinex, 2022-08-08
VaccinexVaccinexOTC VCNX
Filings SEC · Quote Google cited a paper published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation as a basis for its claims in a regulatory filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Regulator · Website. The company read the manner in which it wrote the paper and the actual scope the paper demonstrated, 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 form it files with the Securities and Exchange Commission is called 8-K. The item numbers of the document filed by Vaccinex on 2022-08-08 were 8.01 Other Events · 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. The company cited a paper published in Journal of Neuroinflammation in the attached press release. The sentence citing the paper, copied verbatim from the original, is as follows.
In parallel, a second report has been published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation 2 detailing the pathologic impact of SEMA4D on neuroinflammatory cells in both HD and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
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 company's entire 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's abstract is limited to this.
The paper's title is Semaphorin 4D is upregulated in neurons of diseased brains and triggers astrocyte reactivity and it was published in Journal of Neuroinflammation on 2022-08-06. The authors are affiliated with Vaccinex (United States) and University of Rochester Medicine. The summary at the beginning of the paper is called abstract. This article read only up to that point. The paragraph was written by a person after filtering a draft generated by a machine through numerical comparison, so it is of a different grade than a full reading of the paper.
This paper demonstrated through human brain tissue and mouse experiments that a protein called semaphorin 4D produced by nerve cells changes astrocytes, the brain's support cells, into a reactive state. In brain sections from patients with Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's disease and in mouse models of these diseases, reactive astrocytes were found clustered around nerve cells that produced large amounts of this protein. Mice with this protein blocked by antibodies showed less loss of inhibitory synapses and recovery of spatial memory. Since this is an animal and cell culture experiment, whether the same effect occurs in humans is beyond the scope of this paper.
The abstract does not answer; it remains in the main text and the appendix. This text, 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 in the bottom 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 written 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 | −5.7% | The extent to which it had already moved before the filing |
| regulatory filing day | +4.9% | filing day or the first trading day thereafter |
| +1~+5 trading day cumulative | +0.5% | one week |
| +1~+20 trading day cumulative | −29.1% | 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 -29.1% in this case is within the bottom quarter, at the 13% 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% | −6.9% | +5.5% | +19.5% | −29.1% |
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 of 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.
After the filing, the company submitted these documents.
After the filing date, this company submitted three 8-K filings. Only the item numbers are listed here. 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 determined by the number. The specific event is read in the original text of each link.
- 2022-09-13 8-K Item 7.01, 9.01 — Reg FD disclosure · financial statements · exhibits
- 2022-10-11 8-K Item 3.01 —
- 2022-11-10 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 re-evaluated what using which method and up to what extent. How many times the paper cited by the company was cited afterward can be rechecked through the citation count on OpenAlexOpenAlex
Data source · Website. What will be seen next is whether the company's next 8-K again cites the same paper.
Term Explanation
- 8-K
- A periodic report submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when a listed company has something to inform its shareholders. The type is indicated by item numbers such as earnings, contracts, and executive changes. All events in this article are derived from this document.
- Excess return
- The remainder obtained by subtracting the overall market return from the stock return. It is used to observe the movement of the company alone by removing the portion where the market as a whole rises or falls.
- Trading day
- A date counted only 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 and limitations of the methods.