More thoughts on Celsion's 190th event

So it looks like the company has probably hit the 190th event... recent PRs talk about "confirming" rather than "achieving" the 190th event.

A reputable poster (biopharmpr) on Yahoo, who also tweets a bit under Magicsia and has a blog with some great info about Celsion, says he spoke with IR and the company is now backing off saying they will PR when the 190 happens.

Supposedly, they are concerned about having more than 190 events by the time they confirm 190 for sure, and then having to explain THAT makes them not want to do so at all. So - it is getting more likely that the next PR about the HEAT trial will end up being the actual interim results!!

I don't like this for several reasons, and I will probably call Jeff Church tomorrow when I can get my thoughts down cogently. But the important things for CLSN investors today are:

Per the last filng, they expect the 190th event in the 3rd Q and results in the 4th Q.
Previous guidance is for 6-8 weeks between the two.

Absolute best case is results by 9/17 -- meaning the 190th occured quite a while ago, has already been confirmed, and the DMC is currently doing the scutwork of visiting sites and checking paperwork ad nauseam... leading to a postulation of the interim results at 8 weeks by 10/1, but being done in only 6 weeks: 9/17/11. I find this extremely unlikely and think Q4 means exactly that.

Worst case would be the end of December. This could happen if radiologic reviews truly take 2-4 months to accomplish, meaning the event probably happened already, the confirms are pending, and might still take a couple months from now. Adding in the 6-8 weeks to compile/check the trial site info, we could be looking at December before knowing results.

I am mostly in shares, but did dabble in Oct and Jan calls. I think Jan are definitely the safest but there could easily be an "October Surprise" by the third Friday of October. I still expect a runup through September to the $5-7 range. As Mr. Market gets wind of the potential of Thermodox (and who doesn't like a binary event thrown in?) there will be some speculators also riding this up.

Regards,
Trond