Seeking Alpha: Cyclacel Now An Exercise In Futility

If there's any lesson worth learning about biotech - other than that, somehow, Hemispherx (NYSEMKT:HEB) will manage to convince a new crop of investors that its experimental compound Ampligen actually has some use - it's that trying to play long odds with micro-cap oncology biotechs rarely works out. Cyclacel (NASDAQ:CYCC) shares had already been pricing in a much lower than normal expectation of success for a Phase III cancer drug, but even those expectations have proven too optimistic.

With Tuesday's announcement that sapacitabine is unlikely to meet its primary endpoint in the Phase III SEAMLESS study of the drug as treatment for newly-diagnosed acute myelogenous leukemia (or AML) in elderly patients, there is little reason for investors to hold on to hope. While it may technically be possible (as in the odds are not 0%) for the final results to look a little better, that seems exceptionally unlikely and investors should resist the temptation to believe that other applications like MDS will save the day. Cancer biotechs rarely ever go away entirely and these shares could be a speculative playtoy for traders, but investors looking for biotechs with a real future in oncology should move along.

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Cyclacel Now An Exercise In Futility