Hey, Celsion - Tell Me Something Good

Editor's note: This article covers a micro-cap stock. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.

Introduction

Celsion (CLSN) is a "leading oncology company" that I've been following very closely since a month or two before the company's Phase III HEAT trial failure that took place in early 2013.

So far, Celsion has been holding up, staying up over $1 steadily since it has first peeked its head back over the $1 line two months ago.

Celsion's stock performance has waned recently - catalyzed by disclosed short sellers lobbing half truths and conjecture about the company - but also, catalyzed by Celsion themselves. What do I mean by that? I'll explain.

Celsion ended last week in good shape, jumping 15% on yet another company issued PR starting that the company was going to be attending an investor conference and making a presentation. In the past, these presentations had sometimes yielded small runups in the stock in the subsequent days, so Friday's trading was likely people wanting to get in before and if this occurs again.

(click to enlarge)

As I stated in a previous article, those who have been invested in Celsion since before the post-Phase III crash in January 2013 are likely to be sitting on losses. Those who have invested afterwards, in what I call the "new" Celsion, were at one point up pretty handsomely - but lately, the price has settled in the $1.10-$1.30 region. My first argument to reinvest in Celsion post-crash came when I wrote an article claiming the new Celsion could, at some point, be worth $4/share. I still maintain this view, but we're going to need the company to "tell us something good". More on this later.

As far as refuting the shorts myths, I've done my part. On August 6th, I wrote an article called "4 More Bearish Celsion Myths Refuted,"which was a second part to an article called "6 New Bearish Celsion Myths Destroyed," that I wrote on June 12th of this year. Both articles systematically dissected ludicrous arguments that were laden with hearsay from anonymous sources and general lack of facts.

I'm Behind The Technology

Celsion's technology is, for lack of better words, really rather cool. They're developing liposomal transport systems for delivering medication through the blood stream. Basically, it's like the water soluble packets you put in your dishwasher - when heat is applied to the area in the body through RFA, the liposomes disband and release the drug that they're carrying. From Celsion's website:

Lysolipid Thermally Sensitive Liposomes, or LTSL's, are a unique liposomal technology that allows for the triggered release of a drug payload through low temperature (just above body temperature) heat activation. Used in combination with heat therapy, this concentrates therapy directly within the treatment area.

Although the company didn't have the results that it was looking for in its ThermoDox Phase III study for liver cancer, the company has postulated a number of factors that could be varied in order to attempt to find a successful niche for their LTSL with use in liver cancer.

In addition, the company is currently conducting its DIGNITY study, which uses the same technology for recurrent chest wall cancer. The company has had great preliminary data for Thermodox with use in this area of the body, and those results will be forthcoming in 2014. To this day, I'm still behind the technology that Celsion has 100%. I'd argue that even though they haven't had success with it yet, there are parameters and drugs that they can switch around to find, at some point, a decent use for their LTSL system.

Now, Tell Me Something Good

For certain other reasons, I'm just starting to get the first suggestion of stagnancy with Celsion - here's why:

1. The Company's PRs Aren't Doing Anything For Me

The company has released a slew of PR's over the past few months, all of which talk about presentations and conferences that the company is going to be attending. All of these PRs have managed to temporarily move the stock, but none of them carry with them news of substance that is going to set CLSN up for a long term move.

While I don't mind the company PRing these items, the patience is starting to just run a little thin - if you've got more promising data from the HEAT trial, run with that. If not, simply attend the conference - constant PRs of this nature (aside from the MAJOR conferences like ASCO) aren't necessary in this investors opinion. Also, I'm worried that eventually they start to do more harm than good for the share price.

2. No Execution of Acquisitions

It's been over two full quarters since the company first suggested the idea of acquisitions to not only bolster its pipeline, but to avoid "having all of its eggs in one basket" with Thermodox. I thought this was a great piece of corporate strategy and got behind it immediately. The company said they had engaged Cantor Fitzgerald to assist with potential M&A, and then a quarter later updated that they had 10 potential candidates that they were looking at.

Everything else that the new company proposed after the HEAT trial, namely downsizing and cost cutting, they've done effectively and I've been happy with them.

But, we're now going on three quarters with no substance on acquisitions. I've argued previously that acquiring a profitable company or a company with a pipeline that compliment's Celsion's strategy could be great moves for the company and for shareholders.

Conclusion

Celsion has done almost the maximum of what they can do without producing any major substance since the HEAT trial failed. The company is moving forward and I'm still extremely confident in the executives running the company as well as the technology.

I realize that getting business done takes time, trust me. My bullish lean on the company, however, could start to fade if Celsion doesn't produce something a bit more tangible in the closing months of 2013. I'd settle for any of the following:

1. News on acquisitions

2. Other corporate strategy changes

3. An update on an FDA meeting for a HEAT re-trial

4. News on the DIGNITY study

So Celsion, help your own cause and make the next thing you disclose something good. QTR remains bullish here still, but cautious. I have since liquidated my previous long position in CLSN, but will consider reentry if the price corrects this coming week.

As always, best of luck to all investors.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, but may initiate a long position in CLSN over the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. (More...)

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How do you know that something you cannot see is still present?

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 31 Jul 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
How do you know that something you cannot see is still present?

How do you know that the cookies are still there although they have been placed out of your sight into the drawer? How do you know when and where a car that has driven into a tunnel will reappear? The ability to represent and to track the trajectory of objects, which are temporally out of sight, is highly important in many aspects but is also cognitively demanding. Alice Auersperg and her team from the University of Vienna and Oxford show that "object permanence" abilities in a cockatoo levels apes and four year old human toddlers. The researchers published their findings in the journal Journal of Comparative Psychology.

For investigating spatial memory and tracking in animals and human infants a number of setups have been habitually used. These can roughly be subdivided depending on what is being moved: a desired object (food reward), the hiding places for this object or the test animal itself: In the original invisible displacement tasks, designed by French psychologist Jean Piaget in the 50s, the reward is moved underneath a small cup behind one or more bigger screens and its contents is shown in between visits: if the cup is empty we know that the reward must be behind the last screen visited. Humans solve this task after about two years of age, whereas in primates only the great apes show convincing results.

Likely to be even more challenging in terms of attention, are "Transposition" tasks: the reward is hidden underneath one of several equal cups, which are interchanged one or more times. Human children struggle with this task type more than with the previous and do not solve it reliably before the age of three to four years whereas adult apes solve it but have more trouble with double than single swaps.

In "Rotation" tasks several equal cups, one bearing a reward are aligned in parallel on a rotatable platform, which is rotated at different angles. "Translocation" tasks are similar except that the cups are not rotated but the test animal is carried around the arrangement and released at different angles to the cup alignment. Children find Translocation tasks easier than Rotation tasks and solve them at two to three years of age.

A team of international Scientists tested eight Goffin cockatoos (Cacatua goffini), a conspicuously inquisitive and playful species on visible as well as invisible Piagetian object displacements and derivations of spatial transposition, rotation and translocation tasks. Birgit Szabo, one of the experimenters from the University of Vienna, says: "The majority of our eight birds readily and spontaneously solved Transposition, Rotation and Translocation tasks whereas only two out of eight choose immediately and reliably the correct location in the original Piagetian invisible displacement task in which a smaller cup is visiting two of three bigger screens". Alice Auersperg, the manager of the Goffin Lab who was also one of the experimenters, explains: "Interestingly and just opposite to human toddlers our cockatoos had more problems solving the Piagetian invisible displacements than the transposition task with which children struggle until the age of four. Transpositions are highly demanding in terms of attention since two occluding objects are moved simultaneously. Nevertheless, in contrast to apes, which find single swaps easier than double the cockatoos perform equally in both conditions".

Similarly, Goffins had little complications with Rotations and Translocation tasks and some of them solved them at four different angles. Again, in contrast to children, which find Translocations easier than Rotations, the cockatoos showed no significant differences between the two tasks. Auguste von Bayern from the University of Oxford adds: " We assume that the ability to fly and prey upon or being preyed upon from the air is likely to require pronounced spatial rotation abilities and may be a candidate trait influencing the animals' performance in rotation and translocation tasks".

Thomas Bugnayer from the University of Vienna concludes: "Finding that Goffins solve transposition, rotation and translocation tasks, which are likely to pose a large cognitive load on working memory, was surprising and calls for more comparative data in order to better understand the relevance of such accurate tracking abilities in terms of ecology and sociality".

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our psychology / psychiatry section for the latest news on this subject.

Object Permanence in the Goffin Cockatoo (Cacatua goffini).

By Auersperg, Alice M. I.; Szabo, Birgit; von Bayern, Auguste M. P.; Bugnyar, Thomas

Journal of Comparative Psychology, Jul 22 , 2013, No Pagination Specified. doi: 10.1037/a0033272

Abstract: The ability to represent hidden objects plays an important role in the survival of many species. In order to provide an inclusive synopsis of the current benchmark tasks used to test object permanence in animals for a psittacine representative, we tested eight Goffin cockatoos (Cacatua goffini) on Stages 3–6 of Piagetian object permanence as well as derivations of spatial transposition, rotation, and translocation tasks. Subjects instantly solved visible displacement 3b and 4a but showed an extended plateau for solving Stage 5a at a very late age (10 months). Subjects readily solved most invisible displacement tasks including double hidings and four angles (90°, 180°, 270°, and 360°) of rotation and translocations at high performance levels, although Piagetian Stage 6 invisible displacement tasks caused more difficulties for the animals than transposition, rotations, and translocation tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)

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Health Tips & Info : Is Something Wrong With The War On Cancer?

“Beating cancer: the new frontier of molecular medicine,” enthuses a cover story of The Economist. An opposite mood pervades a cover story of Fortune, “Why we’re loosing the war on cancer.” Both articles appeared in 2004, thirty-three years after President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act that declared “war on cancer.” The difference between them would not be the last in a long line of controversies on cancer research that stretched back to the beginning of the war if not earlier. Undoubtedly all sides are united in their hope of beating cancer. They disagree, sometimes bitterly, on the manner in which the war is waged and the achievements so far. The debates involve many issues, including science under siege. Here we will concentrate on problems regarding the levels of complexity, more specifically, how much scientific knowledge on the level of cancer genes contribute to needs on the level of health care.Americans have poured roughly $200 billion, in inflation-adjusted dollars, into cancer research and cancer drug development between 1971 and 2004. Almost one-half of the bills went to several government agencies, the balance to philanthropies and pharmaceutical companies. In comparison, the government put up about $ 3 billion, matched by a similar contribution from the private sector, for the thirteen-year-long human genome project. That research money bought duplicate catalogs of human genes. What has the much larger fund for cancer research bought?In 1986, the director of National Cancer Institute predicted the eradication of cancer by 2000. Reality was not anywhere close. In 2004, a new director envisioned “the elimination of the suffering and death due to cancer by 2015.”13 Critics deem such unbridled optimism irresponsible; unending rosy promises raise false hopes that turn into cruel disappointments for patients and their families. Sure, generous research funding has bought enormous knowledge about the biology of cancer. However, critics complain that this knowledge about mechanisms on the molecular and cellular levels has little practical impact. Few new cancer drugs have resulted, and drying pipelines hang like a stubborn black cloud over the pharmaceutical industry. On the level of human suffering and death, the 1.5 million papers on molecular cancer biology seem to contribute less than the campaign to dissuade people from smoking.Cancer death rate in America, after climbing unrelentingly for a century, peaked in 1990. Since then it has dropped by 12 percent back to its level in 1960. It was a welcomed relief, but hardly a victory. The largest decline occurred in lung cancer, which was attributable less to breakthrough research than to decreasing prevalence of smoking among men. Furthermore, cancer still claimed 564 thousand American lives in 2004, which constituted 24 percent of deaths from all causes.The picture is a little different in the developing countries, where cancer death rate is lower but rising. Worldwide in 2000, cancer caused 6.7 million deaths or 12 percent of total. The World Health Organization estimated that if unchecked, annual global cancer deaths could rise to 15 million by 2020.Although cancer is an ancient disease that afflicts humans and other animals, its prominence in the Western world rose from the nineteenth century to become “a disease of civilization.” There are several explanations of this. Cancer is primarily a disease of elders; its risk increases roughly as the fourth power of age. Thus it was less threatening when infectious diseases and grinding poverty killed before it could strike. Its turn came when gradual alleviation of harsh conditions lengthened life expectancy, first of the aristocracy then of the general population. A subtle and complex disease, it was difficult to diagnose. Identification of cases increased with development of microscopy and scientific knowledge. Case load itself also increased, less because of environmental pollutions than because of changes in diet and life style. An affluent diet rich in meat and refined carbohydrates is enjoyable but not always healthy, so is a comfortable life spared of physical exertion. Widespread tobacco usage is the worse scourge. These demographic and life-style trends are being repeated in the developing world. The “disease of civilization” is spreading.Not all is grim, however. Much could be done to stem the trend, although it would not be easy. The World Health Organization stated: “World Cancer Report provides clear evidence that action on smoking, diet and infections can prevent one third of cancers, another third can be cured.” Is this cautious optimism warranted?From : Sunny Y. Auyang Journal

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