Next week could be a big one for Sirtex Medical Limited (ASX: SRX) as the liver cancer treatment company has gone into a trading halt.
Sirtex called for the suspension as it presents its SIRFLOX clinical study at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago later today.
The company anticipates that the ensuing discussion among experts at the conference will "yield important new information" on its clinical trial.
Shareholders will be keeping their fingers tightly crossed as the SIRFLOX study failed to achieve its primary goal of showing a statistically significant improvement in overall progression free survival.
However, a following review of the findings by ASCO that was released on May 14 produced some bright spots although analysts remain divided on what this really means for Sirtex.
Sirtex's treatment is currently only used as a treatment of last resort and the company was hoping that a good result from the trial will support its case to use the treatment as a first line treatment.
I wrote back then that the ASCO review might not show anything new. We know Sirtex's novel treatment works but that because liver cancer is typically a secondary cancer it may not be so effective, and the share price dipped since the initial bounce.
That could change if ASCO believes the data is sufficient to justify using Sirtex's treatment earlier in the cancer treatment cycle. Maybe not as a first line treatment, but as a treatment of second resort.
Also, the data could justify using Sirtex's treatment in cases where the cancer is confined to the liver.
But there are still a lot of unknowns and the stock is expected to resume trading on Monday.
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