Desperate ZIOP pumper cites "clean" MRI for phase I trial patient

The English language is insufficient to register my disgust with a prolific contributor to various social media platforms who has been promoting ZIOP as a winning investment.  

Verbal sword play is to be expected at places like Stocktwits, Twitter or on message boards where stocks are discussed.  Longs will tout the positives, whether real or perceived, speculating on a bullish future. Bears will naturally do the opposite.  There's lots of name calling and penis waving as debates rage, and a lot of the time it can be fun.  Conflict is the essence of a lot of entertainment.

But it can go over the top, into Enron or Bernie Madoff style pumping where information which is completely erroneous is foisted on the Internet.  

I want to be perfectly clear about something here.  This is not a reflection on Ziopharm the company. No firm, publicly traded or otherwise, can control what some morons put out on the Internet, and to expect otherwise is unrealistic.  

Years ago a SeekingAlpha writer wrote a blog which it seems was published on Forbes.com as well, with information that Ziopharm claimed was inaccurate.  The posting was removed, and based on the available information it seems Ziopharm was claiming that the author's information about a Phase II study of their drug candidate Palifosfamide was misleading and wrong.

You can read their response here:  

http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2012/10/19/498408/10009112/en/ZIOPHARM-Issues-Statement-Regarding-Misleading-Blog.html

That is all well and good, ultimately investors need to have good and reliable information upon which to make investment decisions.  The fact that Palifosfamide ultimately failed doesn't matter, if Mr. Pearson was putting out inaccurate or misleading information it behooves the company to set the record straight.

But its a two way street.  You can't just seek to correct falsehoods that throw a negative light on your company, and then ignore an outright lie because it has a bullish positive tilt.  And this lie is so disgusting it boggles the mind.

Here's the tweet.

 

rc‏@pharmamaven

@AvoidTheBag $ZIOP patient #1 stage 4 failed all other therapies MRI clean almost 1yr vs 3-5 mos expected OS http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=16353&mn=52416&pt=msg&mid=16038066 … $XON

10:46 AM - 24 May 2016

This is absolutely disgusting.  This patient #1 being referred to writes a blog himself, and he recently uploaded his MRI onto his site.  The only thing is the author of the blog makes no representation about having a "clean" MRI.  

You can check it out yourself:  https://thebrainchancery.com/2016/05/24/show-us-your-scans/

According to Ziopharm's own PR on the subject they say that: 

• "Recurrent glioblastoma is an aggressive cancer with one of the lowest 3-year survival rates, at 3%, among all cancers" 

This gentleman has been writing about his battle with cancer since April of 2012.  That's over 4 years ago. In September of 2015 he wrote about going on Temodar "AGAIN".  Noting that the previous time he'd done it his tumour shrank.  Temodar is a brand name for Temozolomide, the generic moniker.  

What did Ziopharm say about Temozolomide in their recent PR?

• For patients who have experienced multiple recurrences the prognosis is particularly poor, with a median overall survival (OS) of 6-7 months, while OS in patients that have failed temozolomide and bevacizumab, or equivalent salvage chemotherapy, is approximately 3-5 months. (*bolding and emphasis is mine)

This guy's story is an inspiration, and to totally misrepresent the facts to pump some stock is beyond reprehensible, in my opinion its criminal.  Saying all other therapies failed when this man's tumour shrank after chemo treatment with temozolomide is disgusting.

So who is the waste of skin "pharmaven"?  He posts on Stock Twits with the same user name and on other sites including Investor Village as RobCos.  Investor Village is ground zero for pumping Ziopharm.  Someone linked up one of my posts on there, and in just one hour there were over 100 page views coming from that site, then it was taken down.  What  a shock.  

RobCos of course is the chief pumper, cheerleader and moderator of the Investor Village forum. And Ziopharm in my opinion should distance itself publicly from this Enron style pumper.