u/DeepDivesnGoodMusic

Interviews, inspiring linkedin posts, facebook realness... I'd like to see the personalities of more of the folks involved in bringing these treatments to the suffering masses. I've been making dream-come-true money from stocks but always on quick trades, with the exception of trying to increase the visability of an oncology stock. That changed my heart to consider more long-term values-based investments.

Now I'd like to see more of the character of those great people ushering in this brighter future of treatment as well.

Now hopefully that cute little benzinga article and the rushed mention of Helus is either completely innocuous or just business-as-usual: an attempt to lower shareprice or slow momentum pre-buyout. However, I've known enough regards who ruined their lives by shorting companies based on vibes, and many who dodged the train last-minute. Check out the recent Helus Pharma interview on youtube from a month back - now THIS is a winner.

Considering how many millionaires seem to be ex-hippies for some reason, and now Helus Pharma and its story are quickly becoming more visible... this stock is going to attract a lot of "invest and hold based on values" folks. I'm one of them myself. Nice to meet the rest of you fine folks!

Happy to be making the world a better place, and looking forward to seeing which brand name does want to be associated with this HUGE revolution! It was nice to look at the economics of how this will be highly profitable even with so few doses (like they said in that youtube interview, this drug will allow for more patients to be helped in a given week/month, which means a lot more social momentum from more happy patients sharing their stories. I look forward to seeing it in a couple years (if no suprises hit us in the phase 3 trials, whether or not Helus is a seperate entity at that point).

Any expectations on when or for what purpose the remaining 9mil warrants would be exercised (and do they affect buyout procedures at all)?

Just how long before market open has this company posted PR/trial results sometimes? I'm gonna have a few tabs open watching for various buyouts now. Excited for Q4!

Been keeping most of my money in oncology stocks to stabilize them and help them grow (any company that looks like its drug will be most affordable, and minimal-side-effect as possible), but now seeing what Helus has achieved makes me curious to broaden my perspective. DM's with other stock suggestions are welcome.

I'm guessing from what I've seen lately (as an outsider mind you) that advances in multi-omics and other types of predictive software suites in biomedicine ought to result in less uncertainty for baby biotechs?

Not to mention whatever new diagnostic technologies come about along the way. Is A.I. getting sufficiently better at viewing the world of medical/academic "big data" in a less hallucinatory way, and synthesizing "do's and don'ts" of drug design more effectivley? Or for that matter, realistic measures of where innovation is most needed and/or most profitable?

Wishing you all an optimistic view of the next week and a Sunday you can get lost in 🙂

I've been away from the genre for awhile and wondered what albums or specific songs might have gotten big lately. Also if you know of any artists, recent or fading, who combined indigenous and solarpunk themes in their compositions. Have a GREAT rest of the weekend.

Some friends & family wanted me to recount the story of this stock, but in an “explain like I’m five” way, or more accurately: “explain like I’m super busy because I have a 5-year old” way.

Didn't work AT ALL, still long AF, but it's an easy read!

Like in my professional life I’m just translating what science geeks try to share into more “accessible” language. I am not a financial advisor and I’m not giving financial advice.

Part 1) An immune booster of prestigious pedigree.

Any week now Sellas Life Sciences will publish trial results for “Galinpepimut-S” (or “GPS” for short) a vaccine which teaches the immune system how to find and deal with cancer cells which have the WT1 protein. That includes A LOT of types of cancer. However I don’t want to get peoples’ hopes up, because more tests may be done before the FDA clears it for other cancers (although the FDA gave it “fast track” status). Happily cytokine tests show that the drug does indeed foster the immune response against cancer that it is designed to, and amazingly it is almost side-effect free!

The drug was developed at the #2 rated cancer hospital in the USA then licensed to Sellas Life Sciences. Its core team and science advisory board combined spans 18 people (some from the #1 and #2 cancer hospitals in the U.S.). For more on that, google my reddit post: “list of global leaders on the SLS team.”

The final "Phase 3" trial will explore how much better it is than existing treatments, some of which are known to be quite rough on the body (my fellow nerds can google "dangers of myelotoxicity, Ven-Aza combination"). A doctor who I believe sees the largest contingent of patients in the phase 3 trial has so far said enthusiastic things about GPS.

As we see from the latest PR, so many of the patients are happily still alive. I will link some discussions in which super-nerds on Reddit (skilled in fields like, Biology, Quantitative Finance, and Statistics) have analyzed this unprecedented survival time, along with the company overall. They looked diligently for any way the drug could have come up short, and even found a couple uncommon ways such a seemingly clear victory for science might still fail to achieve statistical significance. You can see their overall confidence and enthusiasm in links like these:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellasLifescience/comments/1vgiw0p/absolute_proof_gps_will_reach_the_636_primary/

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellaslifesciences/comments/1uuwnmz/hashi_june_2026_pediatric_aml_posttransplant_one/

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellaslifesciences/comments/1v4vyn5/new_study_published_today_bat_doesnt_work/

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellasLifescience/comments/1vgnyt8/this_short_rigged_225b_baby_bio_is_about_to/

A personal favorite, but very dense.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellaslifesciences/comments/1tjghh1/a_timeline_of_what_i_think_happens_over_the/

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellaslifesciences/comments/1vg8vyy/where_theres_smoke_theres_fireties_between_jj_and/

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellaslifesciences/comments/1uuqbqi/aml_cr1_bat_mos_is_140145_mos_2021_study_with/

Part 2) a "biotech" stock is a different animal..

Now, biotech stocks are weird. Even at a late point in their life, their stocks can grow 200% (doubling in price), 600%, even 1000%. When they prove that their drugs work, they are quite happy to be be “bought out” by big pharmaceutical companies, who can speed up that jump in stock price to mere days. This further explains the hype surrounding SLS.

Why wouldn’t everyone invest in biotech then? Well, most biotech companies walk a financial tightrope while their existence depends on experimental science. It’s a meme how often biotech stocks can burn bright one minute only to burn to ash the next… In science we often say that we stand on the shoulders of giants, but we mustn't forgot the contributions made to research by all those who failed as well. (Nerd Note: kudos to the scientists who realized a lack of CD4 "immune helper cell" activation was to blame for the failure of many immune boosters similar to GPS. Some prrevious attempts could only sprint, not run a marathon. While the science is more beautifully nuanced than this, it is in some ways similar to an army advancing without supply lines!).

Sellas Life Sciences seems to be built specifically to be strong in every category that is usually weak or uncertain for biotech stocks - because it is expensive and unpredictable to take a drug through clinical trials. Turns out, having many more millions of dollars than most upcoming biotechs DOES help, along with having a drug developed at the 2nd best oncology hospital in America and scientific advisors from both of the top two. Their board members also include successful corporate strategists from big pharma who planned various large “corporate acquisitions” worth many billions of dollars each.

Part 3) But why does SLS stock look like a roller coaster all of a sudden?

Basically many people received "warrants" years ago, a sort of BOGO offer to buy stock. Warrants can be turned into new “shares”… but more "shares" of a company in existence makes the price of every share worth less.

It’s like when we cut more shares of a cake to share it with more people - doing so doesn’t magically make more cake! Someone with warrants asks the company to make more slices…

But in the stock world someone can also buy a “short” on a stock, which makes profit if the shareprice goes down. What if they also write an article or make comments online that convince people to sell their shares? That also makes the price of each share go down… you can see why someone might combine all those things at once!

However, if the price goes up dramatically, a “short” can also LOSE lots of money... LOTS of money. More than a month ago some users or bots on reddit claimed to have short positions while taunting various stock traders and cancer survivors on the SLS reddit. That was just before the stock price leapt from $5 to the $7-8 range. Then soon after it kept going again until it reached about $15. Around this time came a relentless stream of negative articles and often silly/unrealistic comments about the company... accompanied by an insane amount of warrant use. Each morning someone was fiercely cutting that cake into smaller and smaller slices while yelling that it wasn't any good anyways. (An old timer on the forums asked me to Google the following, and I see this subject is quite the deep dive: " SEC anson funds paid short publishers ").

Hopefully that explained a lot and was helpful to some of your friends and family. It’s a joy to share what’s looking by all indications to be another little moment of biomedical history (based on doctor testimony, released data for the survival timeline, and studies of other WT1-targeting drug successes recently).

I’m excited for the near-future of science and happy for all the people outside of the controlled studies who have been receiving GPS through the EAP (expanded access program). Please join me in giving gratitude for the continued survival of so many cancer patients both within the study and outside of it.

Let us pray for daring and decisive action, both on the part of the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical companies we know as household names. It may soon be up to them to show just how quickly one can change the world and rush to the aide of those in need. To everyone working the 9-5 (and then some) trying to keep everything from grinding to a standstill, whether you're at the desk all day or on the road doing outside sales, we salute you.

For convenience, here are some other commonly shared Reddit threads on the subject:

Remaining warrants discussion

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellaslifesciences/comments/1v8nt1e/estimation_of_remaining_warrants_update/

Other uses of WT1 drug

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellaslifesciences/comments/1vfraae/wt1_vaccine_for_brain_cancer_guy_alive_20_years/

A layperson’s take on SLS

https://www.reddit.com/r/sellaslifesciences/comments/1t6uts2/9999_regal_trial_success_rate_what_does_this_mean/

(Sorry for my VERY inconsistent formatting! Graduate school was a decade ago and I barely need to work. FYI, I picked their names at random from a list of 19-20 to share a few highlights for each).

*DISCLAIMER*: Oh and first a clinician wanted me clarify this, and I put into the simplest language possible so I can also share elsewhere, in non-stock-related forums:

... So, Sellas Life Sciences has a WILD stock resembling a roller coaster, but it does not reflect poorly on the competence of these fine scientists who I'm giving a shoutout to today. Basically many people received "warrants" years ago, a sort of BOGO offer to buy stock, which funded clinical trials for cancer treatment. Warrants can be turned into new shares... but more "shares" of a company in existence means each share is then worth less (each becomes a smaller relative percentage of the company). Day traders can place a "short" just before doing this - a lucrative bet that the stock will drop in value. Some people were quite open on forums that they had placed shorts... Sadly, right before the price JUMPED! Yikes!!

So if you see weekly articles or forum bots so convinced the science will fail, it's less likely that these scientists weren't doing their best work, and much more likely that someone is trying desperately to avoid loosing money, possibly all of their money.

There, context explained...

Michael Bolton- “…NOW BACK TO THE GOOD PART-”

In 2009, the National Cancer Institute evaluated some 75 tumor antigens, eventually ranking "Wilms' Tumor 1" (WT1) as their #1 priority target... Yet because of drug limitations and WT1’s "trickster" nature as both a tumor suppressor and tumor instigator at times - it was called “undruggable”…

Avengers, assemble! (as one Redditor put it).

First, a shoutout to a non-scientist on the team:

Katherine Bach Kalin, MBA. Executive Leadership at Johnson & Johnson (2002–2011), then Head of Corporate Strategy at Celgene from 2012 to 2017.

She helped Celgene grow from mid-size into one of THE TOP biopharma powerhouses globally. Conducted a $7.2 billion acquisition of “Receptos” in 2015.

By 2017 Celgene’s revenue more than doubled since her arrival, to 13 billion.

She would later secure for them an enormous $74-billion buyout deal with Bristol Myers Squibb in November 2019.

Her words on leadership: “Knowing how and when to be demanding, encouraging, believing, and yet striving always to be caring and inspiring are very difficult things to learn and apply in practice.”

Note: I’m enjoying the story of Angelos Stergiou and the many things he did well. I was picking names at random for the 19-20 people on the team, but I might look through his story again and summarize it soon - paying attention to clarify or dispel misleading claims on the internet spread by short sellers (no shade on you folks, but you bet against scientific progress). I appreciate his pleasant demeanor when answering questions from everyday investors. I’ll admit that I was fooled by propaganda about him months ago!

Dr. Larry W. Kwak, Director of the Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center. Previously head of Vaccine Biology Section at the NCI (National Cancer Institute), Chair of Lymphoma and Myeloma at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Deputy Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at City of Hope.

Among TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world (2010), for his clinical leadership in developing personalized therapeutic cancer vaccines.

https://connection.asco.org/do/meet-two-worlds-most-influential-people

Recipient of the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine (2016): Equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Korea.

One of the first scientists to prove that customized vaccines could be used to train a patient’s own immune system to target and eliminate cancer. He helped shift oncology toward post-chemo maintenance therapies using a vaccines custom-tailored to the genes of patients’ cancers.

Dr. Thomas R. Fleming, Lead Biostatistician on Independent Data Monitoring Committees (IDMCs/DMCs). Former Director, Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Prevention Trial Network, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Recieved FDA’s Special Citation Award for Extraordinary Contribution to the Agency.

Science magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year” award in 2011.

Thomas was becoming a priest when a teacher inspired him to be a mathematician, the field where he also met his wife. Nice job of following one’s intuition! If not for this, who might have co-developed the kind of statistical framework we know today as the “O’Brien-Fleming boundary” which has greatly improved clinical trials.

Philip C. Amrein, M.D.

Recipient of Massachusetts General Hospital's “The One Hundred” honorary title, celebrating individuals whose clinical leadership, and dedication to both patients and research have been instrumental in the fight against cancer.

Veteran of the field of over 50 years! Primary investigator on plenty of new therapeutic approaches to AML, and thus a great team member for this WT1 design. A career focus for him has been the pursuit of tailored and more-tolerable treatments for elderly or high-risk leukemia patients (such as those who can’t withstand most chemotherapy).

Dr. Sharif S. Khan, MD. Director of the Blood & Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program, Bon Secours St. Francis Health.

Spearheaded and established the Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-Cell Program there. A major effort that gave patients fighting aggressive blood cancers local access to cutting-edge cellular immunotherapies!

Dr. Pinilla-Ibarz, MD, PhD (REGAL trial committee)

Received the Moffitt Physician of the Year Award (2016–2017). Principal investigator and key contributor to multi-center clinical trials that successfully brought modern 2nd and 3rd-generation kinase inhibitors through FDA approval. This shifted the standard of care for leukemia patients away from chemotherapy.

Through the Pinilla Laboratory at Moffitt, he has driven effective research into restoring impaired immune functions in blood cancer patients. His lab continuously develops novel peptide and cellular vaccines aimed at preventing disease relapse.

Dr. Linghua Wang, MD, PhD. (TBH…she cute!)

Founding executive director: Center for Cellular Language Intelligence at University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center, a cancer hospital consistently ranked No. 1 by the U.S. News & World Report for over a decade.

Her published work has been cited about 70,000 times. (#OVER-9,000!) https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GNZEW3EAAAAJ&hl=en

She helps the SLS team map how patients’ immune systems respond to GPS, and applies her foremost skills and experience in parsing those biomarkers predictive of which patients will benefit most from SLS009.

Major co-lead on “The Cancer Genome Atlas” project (TCGA). She led an effort using supercomputers to conduct a “multi-omic” analysis (meaning looking at the entire cell holistically) across 33 cancer types, examining how protein changes F***ed up the cell’s various organelles and life processes.

More on the TCGA as a whole, in Gemini’s words:

“Widely considered one of the most transformative scientific initiatives in modern medicine. Launched in 2006 as a joint effort by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the Atlas fundamentally reshaped oncology from a discipline defined by organ location (i.e. "breast cancer" vs. "lung cancer") into one driven by molecular and genetic subtyping!”

In my words again: The TCGA facilitated the discovery of novel molecular subtypes. Among brain cancer: “proneural, neural, classical, and mesenchymal groups,” which helped explain WHY a therapy might work for one patient but not for another (very disparaging!).

Yet another true breakthrough (…and so many on one team, holy sh^^).

Those same insights on Microsatellite Instability (MSI), would later gave clinicians insight to identify tumor variants that Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors were crucial for treating (Keytruda enters the chat).

Panagiotis D. Tsirigotis, MD (saw someone called him TsiriGOATis once - that’s a high accolade among my people).

Professor of Medicine at the NKUA and Chief of Leukemia at Attikon University Hospital. He is an international authority, one of multiple experts consulted for consensus policy decisions at the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT).

Also for those unfamiliar, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) routinely ranks in the top 100 globally for research citations per faculty member, ranking 4th among institutions outside the U.S. It outperforms so many European and U.S. institutions due to massive scientific output in oncology, cardiology, and clinical trials.

According to A.I.: "What makes NKUA’s citation metrics unique globally is its extreme concentration of research firepower.”

Whoa there Gemini.

Dr. Guenther Koehne, MD, PhD, Deputy Director and Chief of Blood & Marrow Transplant and Hematologic Oncology at Miami Cancer Institute.

Course director for the annual “Summit of the Americas on Immunotherapies for Hematologic Malignancies,” which brings together international clinical leaders in blood cancers to develop new consensus in treatment strategies (good luck folks!)

He established trials evaluating heteroclitic WT1 peptide vaccines post-transplant to clear residual disease in high-risk multiple myeloma patients.

Investigator on current high-impact multi-center trials such as CRISPR-Cas9 gene-edited CD33-deleted stem cell transplants for relapsed/refractory AML.

Dr. David A. Scheinberg, M.D., Ph.D. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, ranked #2 U.S. institution for cancer care.

Inventor of over 40 patents and author of over 350 scientific papers and book chapters.

In 2013 was named one of the top 20 “Translational Researchers” globally (https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.2986) Recipient of too many awards to list here.

From A.I.:

Origin of Galinpepimut-S (GPS): The Center served as the incubator for Galinpepimut-S (GPS)—SELLAS Life Sciences’ lead WT1-targeting cancer vaccine candidate. Dr. Scheinberg's lab engineered the synthetic peptide vaccine to elicit a multi-epitope immune response against the WT1 protein, taking it from molecular design all the way through initial clinical validation.

He was chair of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, responsible for:

Pioneering Targeted Alpha Therapies: Under his direction the Center pioneered "targeted atomic nanogenerators.” These constructs use targeted antibodies or peptides to deliver radioactive isotopes (such as Actinium-225 and Bismuth-213) directly inside cancer cells to destroy their DNA while sparing surrounding healthy tissue.

TCR-Mimic (TCRm) Antibodies: His team developed groundbreaking T-cell receptor mimic monoclonal antibodies (such as ESK1). These antibodies can recognize intracellular cancer proteins that are displayed as fragments on the cell surface, opening up previously "undruggable" intracellular targets.

I see Sellas Life Sciences has a much bigger, much more impressive network of contributors than I assumed all this time. I probably wouldn't have discovered if it wasn't for a short seller's many sockpuppets harping on their C.E.O. relentlessly and consistently avoiding any mention of anyone else...

NOW I SEE WHY - What a HILARIOUS contrast!

So I'm just giving a few examples of the interesting people contributing to this hopeful revolution in WT1 targeting capability, but I can see how the two drugs of SLS and all to come after are a huge, decades-in-the-making victory for all involved.

Each of these individuals is worth asking an A.I. “list the accolades and accomplishments of X.”

I welcome others to chime in here about other team members, or about scientists from other companies who you’ve appreciated the work of.

Dr. Larry W. Kwak, Director or the Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center: Among TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world (2010), for his clinical leadership in developing personalized therapeutic cancer vaccines.

https://connection.asco.org/do/meet-two-worlds-most-influential-people

Dr. David A. Scheinberg, M.D., Ph.D. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, ranked #2 U.S. institution for cancer care.

Inventor of over 40 patents and author of over 350 scientific papers and book chapters.

In 2013 was named one of the top 20 “Translational Researchers” globally (https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.2986) Recipient of too many awards to list here.

From A.I.:

Origin of Galinpepimut-S (GPS): The Center served as the incubator for Galinpepimut-S (GPS)—SELLAS Life Sciences’ lead WT1-targeting cancer vaccine candidate. Dr. Scheinberg's lab engineered the synthetic peptide vaccine to elicit a multi-epitope immune response against the WT1 protein, taking it from molecular design all the way through initial clinical validation.

He was chair of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, responsible for:

Pioneering Targeted Alpha Therapies: Under his direction the Center pioneered "targeted atomic nanogenerators.” These constructs use targeted antibodies or peptides to deliver radioactive isotopes (such as Actinium-225 and Bismuth-213) directly inside cancer cells to destroy their DNA while sparing surrounding healthy tissue.

TCR-Mimic (TCRm) Antibodies: His team developed groundbreaking T-cell receptor mimic monoclonal antibodies (such as ESK1). These antibodies can recognize intracellular cancer proteins that are displayed as fragments on the cell surface, opening up previously "undruggable" intracellular targets.

Dr. Linghua Wang

Founding executive director: Center for Cellular Language Intelligence at University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center, a cancer hospital consistently ranked No. 1 by the U.S. News & World Report for over a decade.

Originally an opthamologist after medical school, but within months she followed her husband to Tokyo for his Ph.D program. She was hired in a cancer genetics laboratory, and there felt inspired to earn a Ph.D in cancer genomics in Tokyo. “I realized that studying the cancer genome can transform cancer diagnosis and treatment and help cancer patients. After that, I was hooked on cancer genomics and data science.”

Today, her published work has been cited about 70,000 times. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GNZEW3EAAAAJ&hl=en

She helps the SLS team map how patients’ immune systems respond to GPS, and applies her foremost skills and experience in parsing those biomarkers predictive of which patients will benefit most from SLS009.

Dr. Panagiotis Tsirigotis (months ago someone lauded him as TsiriGOATis which gave me a good laugh).

Professor of Medicine at the NKUA and Chief of Leukemia at Attikon University Hospital.

From A.I.: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) routinely ranks in the top 100 globally for research citations per faculty member (and ranks 4th among institutions outside the U.S.), outperforming many wealthy European and U.S. institutions due to massive scientific output in oncology, cardiology, and clinical trials.

Also from A.I. "What makes NKUA’s citation metrics unique globally is its extreme concentration of research firepower.”

Whoa there Gemini.

And lastly, wanted to share what Alex Kentsis had to say. Pediatric oncologist, and professor of pediatrics, pharmacology, and physiology & biophysics, and founding director of the center for developmental oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Hearing his perspective of essentially having one foot on each frontline of medical science makes me appreciate the “cognitive code-switching” one must do throughout the year in that line of work. Heck, not just cognitive, but of the heart as well. I hope his research contributes to a much brighter future for all the kids he works with.

22:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_kZIWWg9GA

Sounds like a HUGE amount of financial long-term modeling may be done for each offer. Does the pace accelerate after an "initial salvo of offers," and has there ever been a frenzied buyout scenario where follow-up haggling/revisions occurred more than once in a day? Or is the process so structured against chaos that there is a very limited number of revisions to offers?