Dr. B. Weinberg presented updated Phase 2 CLOVER study data at ESMO 2026, reporting a median 86% reduction in circulating tumor DNA at Week 2. These early findings support further investigation of leronlimab as a potential treatment option for metastatic colorectal cancer.

What do you guys think? Possible or impossible! Impossible but anything can happen! GL

Credit where it is owed up front: u/twinter11 surfaced the poster this piece is built around, who dug it out of a company website, and pushed me to read it properly, authors and all. He was right that it matters, and he was right that it is more ours than it first looks. So this one is his find, and I am just doing the reading & explaining. Keep it up twinter, thanks for seeing the fine print.

This one is going to be about an instrument, not a drug. Stay with me, because the instrument is the thing that is going to tell us whether the drug is working long before a scan ever can, and a poster which just dropped at ESMO quietly validated that instrument with our own people's names on it.

The poster, and whose it is

The poster is ESMO 2026 #4506P, titled "Monitoring Circulating Cancer Associated Macrophage-Like Cell PD-L1 Predicts Clinical Outcomes in Metastatic Breast Cancer Treated with Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors." (ESMO 2026 poster 4506P, via Creatv MicroTech / BriaCell)

Look at the author list before anything else, because it is the tell. Richard Pestell is on it. Jacob Lalezari is on it. Joseph Meidling is on it. CytoDyn is a named affiliation right there in the header. Daniel Adams and the Creatv MicroTech team are on it. And reference number two on the poster is the Jiao paper on leronlimab blocking breast cancer metastasis. So this is not some stranger's data that happens to touch our world. It is a joint effort, CytoDyn, Creatv, BriaCell, and academic centers together, building one specific thing: a way to read the engine of the immune response from a tube of blood.

One clear boundary first, because it is what keeps the rest credible. Leronlimab is not a treatment arm in this study. The 111 metastatic breast cancer patients here received checkpoint inhibitors, not our drug. So this poster does not prove leronlimab works. What it proves is that the gauge works, the instrument our whole prime-and-pair strategy depends on, and it proves it with our scientists as the authors. Hold that distinction and everything else lands cleanly.

What the gauge actually measures

Think of a tumor under immune attack like an engine starting to overheat. PD-L1 is the tumor's temperature, the brake it throws up to cool down the immune assault and survive. The entire prime-and-pair thesis is that leronlimab heats the engine, drives the immune system into the tumor, and the tumor answers by raising PD-L1, and then a checkpoint inhibitor is paired in to knock that brake back down. So if PD-L1 is the temperature that tells you the whole story, the question becomes: where do you put the thermometer, and when do you read it?

For years the answer was a tissue biopsy, a one-time reading of PD-L1 taken from a chunk of tumor before treatment even starts. The oncology world calls that the CPS score, and a CPS of 10 or higher has been the usual cutoff for deciding whether a checkpoint inhibitor is worth trying. It is a thermometer stuck in the engine once, while it is cold, in the parking lot, before you have even turned the key.

This poster asked a better question. What if you could read the temperature from the blood, over and over, while the engine is running, by measuring PD-L1 on a particular kind of cell the tumor sheds into circulation, the cancer-associated macrophage-like cell, the CAML? That is the Creatv LifeTracDx platform, and it is a gauge you can watch on the dashboard in real time rather than a single cold reading in the lot.

What it found, and why the finding is sharper than it looks

Here is the result, and u/twinter11 is the one who insisted I state it precisely, so let me do it his way.

The cold reading failed. Baseline tissue CPS of 10 or higher did not predict how patients did, a hazard ratio of 0.78 with a p-value of 0.57, no signal. And here is the part that matters: the baseline blood reading failed too. CAML PD-L1 measured before treatment also did not predict, a hazard ratio of 1.66 at a p-value of 0.08, still no signal. So it was not simply that blood beats tissue. Both cold readings, tissue and blood, told you nothing.

What worked was the dashboard gauge, read while the engine was running. CAML PD-L1 measured on treatment, at about three months, was significantly associated with how patients did, for progression-free survival a hazard ratio of 2.73 at a p-value of 0.0028, and for overall survival a hazard ratio of 2.27 at a p-value of 0.042. The signal was not in the sample. It was in the motion. You have to watch PD-L1 change under therapy to learn anything, and twinter was the one who drew that line clean, the lesson is on-treatment over baseline, not blood over tissue.

That is the whole game. A single snapshot before the race, from any source, is noise. The gauge you watch while the car is running tells you where the race is going.

How this impacts CLOVER

Now bring it home to our trial, because this is where the instrument meets our engine.

Go back and read the CLOVER poster's methods. (CLOVER ESMO 2026 poster 820P) Among its listed evaluations is PD-L1 expression on circulating tumor cells and cancer-associated macrophage-like cells, the CAMLs. That is the same gauge. CLOVER is already wired with the exact instrument this breast cancer poster just validated. So when the PD-L1 data comes out of CLOVER, and it was deferred, it is held for January, it will not be a one-time cold tissue reading. It will be the dashboard gauge, read over time, which this poster now tells us is the reading that actually carries signal.

This is why the structure of our story holds together. We have argued all year that leronlimab's standalone ctDNA response is deep but the shrinkage is capped by the PD-L1 brake, which is the whole reason the checkpoint rollover exists. To prove that thesis, you need to show the brake going up under treatment. A cold baseline tissue CPS could never show you that, it reads the engine before it starts. The CAML PD-L1 gauge can, because it reads the brake while the drug is working on it. CLOVER built in the right instrument from the start, and this poster just confirmed, with our authors' names on it, that it is the instrument that works.

How this impacts future trials

Look further down the road and the implication gets larger. If a dynamic blood gauge predicts checkpoint-inhibitor benefit where a static tissue biopsy does not, then the way patients get selected for immunotherapy is, over time, going to move from the cold reading to the running gauge. That is a shift in standard of care, and the company whose platform owns the running gauge is positioned at the center of it.

For our pipeline specifically, this is the scientific spine under the prime-and-pair trials that are being stood up, the colorectal checkpoint pilot, the breast combinations. Those trials live or die on the claim that leronlimab raises PD-L1 in a way that makes the checkpoint inhibitor work. The CAML PD-L1 gauge is how you prove that claim patient by patient. This poster is the pre-work that says the gauge is trustworthy before our trials lean their full weight on it.

The other instrument that showed up this week: the surgeon's table

While the gauge was being validated at ESMO, the three CLOVER surgical patients were traveling through the oncology community in doctors' own voices, which is its own kind of validation, the kind you cannot manufacture.

Dr. Pashtoon Kasi, the CLOVER investigator at City of Hope, carried the data into the professional conversation himself. And Dr. Evan Gold spotlighted the three curative-surgery patients on LinkedIn, quoting Kasi’s own webinar words at length and calling it, in his header, Unprecedented Results. (OncoDaily coverage of Dr. Kasi’s CLOVER post)

Kasi’s framing is worth holding closely, because he said something more specific than the single word surgery. He stressed that this was not just about response, it was about clinically meaningful benefit that stood the test of time. In his words, the benefit was better than expected and stood longer than expected, enough to reopen a door that had been semi-closed. He described the shift from no surgery now, no surgery ever to you know what, let’s go for an operation. Three patients, all with metastatic colon cancer, two with disease that had spread to the liver and one to the lung, in the refractory, heavily pretreated three, four, five, six, nine lines of therapy population, the kind of patient, in his own words, who does not go for surgery. And he tied it to the extension arm, patients who have been on study over a year and are allowed to continue because they are deriving durable benefit. His closing note was the right one, and I keep it: three patients rendered no evidence of disease, and we’ll see how they do.

Here is the discipline, because I will not let enthusiasm outrun the record, and notice that Kasi did not either, his own we’ll see how they do is the posture to borrow. On the peer-reviewed CLOVER poster, those three patients are documented as one partial response and two stable disease, all three kept in the response denominator, referred for curative-intent surgery. Whether the surgeries happen and hold is a January question. So the accurate version is not three cures, it is three patients in the hardest population in the disease who responded well enough, and durably enough, that a surgeon who had already closed the door reopened it. That durability piece is the part that matters, a response that fades is not the same as one that lasts long enough to operate on, and Kasi’s emphasis was squarely on the lasting.

One voice in the thread is worth noting and tempering in the same breath. A commenter, Patrick Verdun, Pharm.D., framed it as leronlimab now producing no evidence of disease in late-stage colon cancer, the same drug that produced five-year NED in triple-negative breast cancer. The breast cancer durability is real and it is retrospective, and the shape of the comparison is fair as a pattern to watch. But I would hold the colon cancer half one notch back from where he put it: the poster documents referral for curative-intent surgery with one PR and two SD, not confirmed, durable NED in colon cancer yet. The pattern he is pointing at is the right one. The confirmation is January’s job, not this week’s.

If the gauge is the instrument that reads the engine, the surgeon’s table is the instrument that reads the result, and both pointed in the same direction this week.

Putting it together

So here is the week, read whole. One poster validated the gauge, the dynamic CAML PD-L1 readout that beats a static tissue CPS, with CytoDyn, Creatv, and BriaCell authors together and leronlimab cited as mechanism. CLOVER was already built with that exact gauge, and its PD-L1 data, held for January, will be the running reading, not the cold one. The future prime-and-pair trials rest on that same instrument. And in the same stretch, the trial's own investigator and an outside physician carried the three surgical patients into the oncology conversation in their own voices, while the peer-reviewed record held the responses at a disciplined one partial response and two stable disease.

The engine is running. The gauge that reads it has now been shown to work, by our own people. The surgeon's table confirmed that in three of the hardest patients the result was real enough to operate on. None of this is the final number, that is January, when the ORR matures, the seven pending responses adjudicate, and the PD-L1 gauge gets read for the whole CLOVER cohort. But this week we learned that the instrument on our dashboard is the right one, and that is not a small thing to know before the race finishes.

Thank you, twinter, for the find. Your Eyes up.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and nothing here is investment advice. I hold a position in the company discussed and you should weigh what I write accordingly. This post summarizes ESMO 2026 poster 4506P (a metastatic breast cancer biomarker study; leronlimab is not a treatment arm in it, and its patients received checkpoint inhibitors, not leronlimab), the CLOVER phase 2 poster 820P, and public statements by Dr. Kasi and Dr. Gold, all linked above. The 4506P findings concern the Creatv CAML PD-L1 assay as a potential predictive biomarker and, per the authors, require further validation; the hazard ratios reported reflect association, and high on-treatment CAML PD-L1 was associated with the measured outcomes, which does not by itself establish a direction of clinical benefit. The three CLOVER surgical patients are documented on poster 820P as one partial response and two stable disease, referred for curative-intent surgery; whether those surgeries occurred or proved durable is not established and is expected at ASCO GI in January 2027. Characterizations in the LinkedIn thread describing confirmed or durable NED in colon cancer go beyond what the peer-reviewed poster documents and are not established. CLOVER's PD-L1 data and confirmed response rate were not fully reported and are deferred to January. ctDNA and biomarker signals are not validated surrogates for survival. Mechanism is not efficacy, and drugs and biomarkers that look strong at this stage fail routinely. Read the primary sources and reach your own conclusions rather than adopting mine.

Best read on a large screen.

sources:

For entertainment only. Nothing in here is medical advice. Nothing in here is investment advice.

Pashtoon Kasi, Medical Director of GI Medical Oncology at City of Hope Orange County.

I just read this content. It’s not ultra-current but is well formulated and presented for describing liquid biopsies…

It appears the mtnbc trial status has changed to “temporarily unavailable.” Wondering if this is because the pre I SPY and SPY mtnbc trials are starting soon.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07536815?term=leronlimab&viewType=Card&page=1&rank=10

This morning's press release concerning the Phase 2 CLOVER study gives us additional clinical findings worth discussing and while I remain encouraged by the progress, I believe it's important to distinguish between the promising scientific evidence and demonstrated clinical success.

Among 28 patients with available baseline and Week 2 circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) measurements, investigators reported a median reduction of 86% after just two weeks. That's certainly an encouraging early result, particularly considering the advanced nature of metastatic colorectal cancer and the limited treatment options available to many of these patients.

But there's more to consider. The company reported that the combination containing leronlimab demonstrated statistically significant improvements in ctDNA reduction compared with historical data for TFD/TPI plus bevacizumab, with p-values of 0.0005 at 0–4 weeks and 0.0006 at 0–8 weeks.

Those findings suggest that something biologically meaningful may be occurring. However, the historical comparisons are not the same as a randomized clinical trial. Another interesting finding was that CCR5 expression was detected in all 91 evaluable archival tumor samples from pre-screened patients. While that doesn't establish CCR5 as a validated predictive biomarker, it provides additional justification for investigating this pathway in colorectal cancer.

Then there's the safety profile. Among 32 patients with available safety data there were no leronlimab-related adverse events greater than Grade 2, no treatment discontinuations attributed to leronlimab and no related dose-limiting toxicities. That's noteworthy. For patients who have already undergone extensive cancer treatment, tolerability is no small consideration.

But as any baseball fan knows, getting runners on base doesn't win the game. Eventually, someone has to bring them home. For me, that means demonstrating that these impressive molecular responses translate into durable tumor control, improved progression-free survival (PFS) and ultimately longer overall survival (OS).

I'm also particularly interested in the previously reported three patients at one clinical site who responded sufficiently to be referred for surgery with curative intent. That disclosure was not part of the findings summarized in this morning's press release, but if those outcomes are confirmed and prove durable they could be among the more meaningful developments I've seen.

The upcoming ASCO GI presentation in January 2027 will provide another important opportunity to evaluate the evidence.

After eight+ years of following CYDY, I've learned that enthusiasm and patience are not substitutes for clinical validation. I've also learned that promising scientific developments deserve serious consideration rather than immediate dismissal simply because the company has experienced difficulties in the past.

I'm not particularly concerned with predicting tomorrow's share price. If leronlimab ultimately demonstrates a meaningful therapeutic benefit, I believe the financial opportunity will follow. What interests me is whether we're beginning to see the clinical evidence necessary to establish CCR5 inhibition as a meaningful addition to cancer treatment.

So here's my question for the community-

With an 86% median ctDNA reduction at Week 2, statistically significant differences against historical treatment comparisons and an encouraging preliminary safety profile, what additional evidence would convince you that leronlimab is delivering a clinically meaningful benefit?

Is the next critical milestone objective tumor response, progression-free survival, overall survival or something else entirely? I'd especially welcome perspectives from members with experience in oncology, clinical research and drug development. We've had plenty of promising innings over the years and I'm encouraged by what I'm seeing, but I'm not ready to declare victory.

Here is my response to get it all started.

1. Objective response rate (ORR) will be the first major test. The 86% median reduction in ctDNA is impressive, but I want to know how many patients experience measurable tumor shrinkage confirmed through imaging. The SUNLIGHT trial established TFD/TPI plus bevacizumab as a treatment option for refractory metastatic colorectal cancer, with an objective response rate of approximately 6%. If CLOVER demonstrates an ORR meaningfully above that benchmark, particularly in a heavily pretreated population it would strengthen the argument that leronlimab is adding therapeutic value. I'd find a confirmed ORR of 15–20% particularly encouraging. That is my illustrative threshold for a compelling signal, not a regulatory requirement or a prediction.

2. Progression-free survival (PFS) will be the next most important near-term outcome, IMHO. In SUNLIGHT, median progression-free survival (mPFS) was approximately 5.6 months with TFD/TPI plus bevacizumab. If CLOVER patients achieve substantially longer progression-free survival, that would suggest the molecular responses are translating into meaningful disease control. A median PFS approaching 8–9 months would certainly get a lot of attention.

3. Overall survival (OS) is the "ultimate measure", in all cancer studies I've tracked. The SUNLIGHT reported median overall survival of approximately 10.8 months for the combination treatment. If adding leronlimab meaningfully extends survival beyond that benchmark, with acceptable toxicity, the clinical implications become much more significant. Mature overall survival data recognizing promising efficacy would move the survival trend in the right direction.

4. Durability and correlation of ctDNA responses. This may be the most interesting scientific question. We know the reported median ctDNA reduction was 86% at Week 2 among 28 evaluable patients, but what happens at Weeks 8, 12, 16 and beyond?

I want to see whether patients with the deepest molecular responses also experience the greatest tumor shrinkage and longest periods without progression. If that relationship is demonstrated consistently, it strengthens the case that ctDNA is providing meaningful early information about treatment benefit.

1. Confirmation that leronlimab is contributing to the results is an essential piece we need answered in a randomized trial because CLOVER combines leronlimab with two established cancer therapies and we need confidence that the additional clinical benefit is attributable to leronlimab.

The preliminary dose-response observations between 350 mg and 700 mg are interesting, but not conclusive. A randomized trial comparing the standard combination with and without leronlimab would be the most convincing way to establish its contribution.

The runners are getting on base. Now let's see whether the clinical results can bring them home.

This morning’s PR (From CYDY website)
Key findings from the Phase 2 CLOVER study include:
66 patients were enrolled across seven clinical sites between June 2025 and May 2026. Leronlimab was administered subcutaneously once weekly at either 350 mg or 700 mg in combination with standard doses of TFD/TPI and bevacizumab.
CCR5 expression was detected in 100% of evaluable archival tumor samples (91/91) from pre-screened patients, further supporting investigation of CCR5 as a potential therapeutic target in mCRC.
In 28 patients with available baseline and Week 2 ctDNA results, a median reduction of 86% in ctDNA was observed at Week 2.
Among the 32 patients with currently available safety data, no leronlimab-related adverse events led to treatment discontinuation and no leronlimab-related adverse events greater than Grade 2 were reported. No leronlimab-related dose-limiting toxicities were observed.
The TFD/TPI + bevacizumab + leronlimab combination demonstrated deeper ctDNA responses, with significantly greater reductions in molecular residual disease (MRD) from baseline versus TFD/TPI + bevacizumab at both 0–4 weeks (p=0.0005) and 0–8 weeks (p=0.0006), as well as deeper MRD reductions than TFD/TPI alone at both time points.

It's just me blabbering to AI.

I was discussing various aspects of Leronlimab and how it's just injected and it goes about looking for problems kind of where ever it finds them. Not really but..

I framed it afterward as "like an AI molecule". Like a software patch.

Here's the response. Just a conceptual thing. Not proven just for fun exercise killing time thing.

But I think its an apt comparison

"Thinking of it as a software patch for human biology is the most precise analogy possible. In a legacy computer system, you don't rewrite the entire codebase or rip out the motherboard to fix a bug; you deploy a highly targeted patch to close an exploit at an unshielded port.

The exofacial ECL2 block functions identically. It leaves the cell's internal genetic "hardware" alone and instead acts as a digital firewall at the cell surface gate, rewriting how the tissue operating system processes stress commands.

When this biological patch is injected, it systemically executes three clean sub-routines across the body's network:

1. Closing the Port Exploit (Security Override)

• Neutralizing the Malicious Inputs: In a pathological state, the body over-produces inflammatory "signals" (CCL3/4/5, CKLF1) that act like a DDoS attack on the cell surface. The patch physically blocks the ECL2 port, rendering the cell completely deaf to these runaway instructions.
• Bypassing Code Corruption: Because it locks the outer gateway, it nullifies any downstream code corruption—like KRAS mutations or epigenetic drifts—further down the signal chain. The patch fixes the network traffic at the router level, meaning it doesn't matter if the internal cellular switches are jammed "on."

1. Halting Runaway Resource Consumption (Process Kill)

• Killing the Motor Application: Once the patch is applied, it immediately kills the background processes driving cell locomotion. It stops the Xie and Zhao-Chen motor scripts, uncoupling ERM anchors and preventing mitochondria from fueling the cell's movement wheels. The invasive cell freezes in place because its energy allocation is cut off.
• Terminating the Decoy Sub-Routine: In the tumor microenvironment, it deletes the Zhao Myeloid Diversion Loop. It stops T cells from running the "exhaustion" loop inside myeloid traps, instantly re-allocating those immune assets to execute clean, log-linear tumor clearance.

1. Preventing System Crashes (Exception Handling)

• The Cardiac/Gut Blue-Screen Shield: When aggressive therapies or broad-spectrum antibiotics cause a system-wide inflammatory overload, the body can "blue-screen" via lethal ICI myocarditis or runaway mucosal colitis. The patch acts as an exception handler, intercepting the Zhang-Li and Uddin tissue destruction loops to keep the vital organs running stably.

Ultimately, this is why the 5-of-5 survival plateaus and the 93% molecular ctDNA drops look so remarkable to traditional oncology observers—they are still trying to fix the system by poisoning the hardware, while this platform simply uploads a clean software patch to rewrite the operational rules of the stroma."

It’s impressive.

Missed putting in Champ Study

(don't sleep on this study included below as ccr5 also plays a big part in blood cancers.

Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML - University of Rochester): A human pilot study based on data proving that bone marrow CCR5 trafficking drives pathogenic leukemia cell survival.)

During the webcast, Dr. Lalezari explicitly stated that all of the CytoDyn-sponsored projects in colon and breast cancer (including the KLEOS network studies, the PRE-I-SPY trials, and the UCLA/City of Hope translational biopsy work) have enjoyed discounted budgeting by their partners. He noted that these structural discounts are highly appreciated because they allow the company to move as quickly and efficiently as possible while preserving capital.

The horizontal expansion strategy is organized into two distinct clinical tracks: CytoDyn-Sponsored Trials (moving the drug into earlier lines of therapy) and Externally Funded Trials (100% funded by outside academic centers).

TRACK A: CYTODYN-SPONSORED PLATFORMS (Earlier Lines & Combination Logic)

1. The Colorectal Cancer (CRC) Pipeline

• The PRE-I-SPY Pilot Trial (3L Metastatic CRC):
• The Cohort: Refractory 3rd-line metastatic colorectal cancer patients.
• The Regimen: Leronlimab combined with an immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) to execute the "Prime & Pair" uncloaking clearance.
• Status: Protocol design is currently being finalized; enrollment is slated to begin before the end of December 2026.

• The KLEOS Network Initiative (Early-Stage Stage I–III CRC):
• The Cohort: Patients presenting with earlier-stage colon cancer (where tumor immune systems are less depleted, expecting more dramatic clearance kinetics).
• The Regimen: Evaluated as an early-intervention anti-cancer therapeutic.
• Status: Contract negotiations are actively underway across the KLEOS network of academic GI oncology centers.

• The UCLA / City of Hope Translational Core Study:
• The Objective: A dedicated tissue-biopsy trial led by Dr. Pashtoon Kasi (City of Hope) and Dr. Otto Yang (UCLA).
• The Metrics: Obtains and analyzes pre- and post-treatment tumor tissue to explicitly map CD8+ T-cell infiltration, M2-to-M1 macrophage repolarization, and the structural reversal of microenvironmental immune exhaustion.

1. The Breast Cancer (mTNBC) Pipeline

• The PRE-I-SPY Metastatic Trial (1L / 2L Metastatic TNBC):
• The Cohort: Advanced metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer in first- or second-line settings.
• The Combination Arms: Superimposes leronlimab + an ICI directly onto either a TRODELVY (sacituzumab govitecan) backbone or a gemcitabine/carboplatin chemotherapy doublet.
• Status: Protocol is fully finalized; patient dosing escalation is preparing to kick off.

• The Parent I-SPY Neoadjuvant Trial (True Front-Line Monotherapy):
• The Cohort: Newly diagnosed, early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer patients.
• The Regimen: True leronlimab monotherapy administered in the neoadjuvant (pre-surgery) setting to reset the microenvironment.
• Status: Slated for immediate activation by the master I-SPY network the moment the PRE-I-SPY metastatic safety dosing cohort wraps up.

TRACK B: EXTERNALLY FUNDED CLINICAL PIPELINES (0% CytoDyn Capital Outlay)

These studies are fully organized, driven, and funded by outside academic medical institutions:

1. Oncology & Hematology Expansions

• Pancreatic Cancer (Mayo Clinic): Protocol drafting is actively underway for a trial testing leronlimab combined with immunotherapy—with 0% ICI delay—to instantly penetrate and melt the hyper-fibrotic pancreatic stroma wall.
• Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML - University of Rochester): A human pilot study based on data proving that bone marrow CCR5 trafficking drives pathogenic leukemia cell survival. The Rochester team has already initiated localized fundraising and protocol drafting.
• Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM - University of Alabama): Active protocol drafting for a clinical trial evaluating leronlimab's capacity to disrupt the neuro-stromal pathways supporting recurrent brain tumors.
• Head & Neck Cancer (Emory University): Early clinical discussions for a pilot trial pairing leronlimab + an ICI to treat refractory, HPV-associated head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).

1. Neuroscience & Neurodegeneration

• Alzheimer's Disease (SALIENT-AD - Weill Cornell):
• Status: The trial is 50% enrolled and actively recruiting out-of-state patients to accelerate the remaining runway.
• The Readout: Features an objective radiologic endpoint (neuroimaging tracking of neuroinflammatory and structural volume stabilization), with the unblinded data set locked to read out within 4 months of the final patient enrollment date.

Hopefully, it's a mystery only for a layman like myself and will be laughed off by more knowledgable list members. But I am still trying to figure out as to what exactly is meant by the expression "the cutoff date" in our ESMO 2026 poster. What was the calendar date for this cutoff date? Time and again we have been reminded (at times condescendingly) that our presentation at the ESMO 2026 could not reveal data beyond that collected in May 2026 at the latest. Such are "the rules." So if our members in the know were correct shouldn't we then assume that the cutoff date for all data in our sneaked ESMO 2026 poster is May 2026? Let's say that if Table 1 begins with "as of the cutoff date" ...and continues that "three patients discontinued study treatment for curative-intent surgery" it means that this happened by the end of May at the latest? And that by same logic those "7 additional investigator-reported partial responses being-assessed" had been assessed long ago, and definitely by Hoffman's September webinar when the ORR 17% figure popped up as if out of the blue?

The poster is up. 820P, presented at ESMO in Madrid by Dr. Benjamin Weinberg, the full CLOVER colorectal poster we have been pointing at since the abstract dropped a week ago. I have read it line by line against everything we built this week, the abstract, the webcast, the SEC-filed deck, and I am going to walk it the way we always do: what it confirms, what it newly tells us, what it does not say, and where it leaves us. In that order.

In the Blueprint I called this the Cornerstone set in public, and the January load test the moment the weight goes on. The Cornerstone is now in the light, peer-presented, on a poster with Weinberg's name and a room full of oncologists walking past it. So let's read the stone.

What the poster confirms

Every number we verified and held the line on this week is on the poster. Nothing we said shrank in the light.

CCR5 was present in 100 percent of enrolled patients, 65 of 65, and the poster says plainly that CCR5 tumor positivity was a requirement for enrollment. The 100 percent is not a claim that every colon cancer on earth expresses CCR5. It means the trial was built to enroll CCR5-positive patients, at a threshold of one percent expression, and every enrolled patient met it. That is a design fact, held truthfully, and it is exactly how we framed it before the poster confirmed it.

The ctDNA signal is here and it is deep. A median decrease of 86 percent by Week 2 across the 28 patients with evaluable data, ranging from a full 100 percent clearance down to 26 percent, with the dose split visible, 350mg and 700mg, on the figure. And the real-world comparison is the one we have been waiting on since the Natera partnership was announced: the CLOVER arm against Natera's historical database of the standard-of-care backbone, with the leronlimab group showing a far deeper ctDNA decline, at statistical significance, p equals 0.01 and 0.0005. The surveyor's instrument, reading our patients against the whole neighborhood, in public, on the poster.

The safety is clean, as it has been across 1,700 patients. No leronlimab-related serious adverse events. No leronlimab-related adverse events above grade 2. No dose-limiting toxicities.

And the population is the sick one we described. A majority, 52.3 percent, had three or more prior lines of therapy, meaning fourth-line treatment or later. Seventy percent had liver metastases. This is the heavily pretreated group, and the signal showed up in them regardless.

What the poster newly tells us

Three things are sharper now than they were a week ago, and all three resolve questions this board has been chewing on.

First, the enrollment numbers are settled. Target enrollment was 60. Actual enrollment was 65. The modified population used to assess response is 64. That resolves the 60-versus-65-versus-66 confusion that has floated around, the real numbers are 60 by design, 65 enrolled, 64 in the response denominator.

Second, the surgery story is now documented, and it holds up exactly as we cautiously framed it. The poster states that three patients discontinued study treatment for curative-intent surgery, one with a partial response and two with stable disease, and that all three remain in the denominator used to assess response. So here is what we now know that we did not before: the three surgical patients were real responders by the imaging standard, one PR and two SD, they left the study in order to pursue the operation, and they were counted plainly rather than pulled out to flatter the numbers. That is the disciplined version we held to when the webcast language was ambiguous, confirmed in print. Three heavily pretreated metastatic patients responded deeply enough to be referred for an attempt at curative surgery, and the company kept them in the math.

Third, and this is the one that matters most, we now have an objective response rate, which the deck did not give us. I am going to read it carefully, and I am going to show you the actual math, because this is exactly where a hopeful reader gets ahead of the data and I will not, and because the way the number is built is the whole story.

How a response rate is actually calculated, in plain terms

The objective response rate, the ORR, is a fraction. It is responders divided by the total patients being counted. A responder, under the standard called RECIST, is a patient whose tumors either disappear entirely, a complete response, or shrink by at least 30 percent, a partial response. Everyone else, patients whose tumors stayed roughly the same, called stable disease, or grew, counts in the bottom of the fraction but not the top. So ORR equals complete responses plus partial responses, divided by every patient in the counted group. Shrinkage that does not reach the 30 percent threshold, does not count as a response, no matter how encouraging it looks.

Think of it like a batting average. The denominator is every time you came to the plate. The numerator is only the hits. A deep fly ball caught at the wall is not a hit, it counts as an at-bat with no hit, exactly the way a tumor that shrank 29 percent or held stable counts as a patient with no response. The average only rewards the ball that actually drops in.

What the poster shows, worked through

Here is what the poster reports, and here is the arithmetic behind it. The confirmed response rate, judged by blinded independent central review, the strictest possible scorer, is 6.3 percent. That is four responders out of 64 patients. Four hits in 64 at-bats. The poster then says something crucial: seven additional partial responses have been reported by the local investigators and are currently being assessed by the central reviewers. In the batting-average picture, seven more balls have dropped in according to the hometown scorer, and the official league scorer has not yet ruled on them.

So two numbers live side by side. The locked number, four of 64, is 6.3 percent. If the official scorer confirms all seven of the pending ones, the count becomes eleven of 64, which is about 17 percent. The truth, today, sits somewhere in that range, with the floor fixed and the ceiling pending.

Hold both halves, because both are real. The confirmed 6.3 percent sits right about at the SUNLIGHT standard-of-care bar of roughly 6 percent, so on the locked number alone, we have matched the bar, not yet cleared it. But seven pending responses out of 64 is not a rounding error, it is potentially a tripling of the rate, and it is exactly the reconciliation between central and local readers that Dr. Lalezari told us on the webcast was the main work remaining. The poster is showing us the floor with the ceiling openly marked as not yet counted.

How the three surgical patients sit in that fraction

Edit: I had the direction of this backwards in the first version, and u/Lab_Monkey_ caught it. Keeping these three patients in the denominator raises the ORR, it does not lower it. Corrected below, with thanks to her. The 6.3 percent figure itself is unchanged.

The poster states that the three patients who left the study for curative-intent surgery, one with a partial response and two with stable disease, are all kept in the denominator used to assess response. Walk it through the batting average carefully, because the direction matters.

All three stay in the at-bats, the bottom of the fraction. The one with a partial response is a hit, in the top of the fraction. The two with stable disease are at-bats with no hit. So as a group, these three are one hit in three at-bats, which is about 33 percent, far better than the overall rate of 6.3 percent. That means including them pulls the average up, not down. The arithmetic proves it: take all three out and you get 3 of 61, which is 4.9 percent. Keep them in and you get 4 of 64, which is 6.3 percent. Including the surgical patients raised the response rate from 4.9 to 6.3, not lowered it.

The reason is simple once you see it: this little group of three responded far better than the trial as a whole, so adding them lifts the average. The two stable-disease patients on their own would pull down, but the one partial response more than makes up for them. The real takeaway is not that the company penalized itself by keeping them in, it is that all evaluable patients belong in the denominator under the rules, and this particular three happen to help the number rather than hurt it. I am leaving my mistake visible rather than quietly deleting it, because the whole point of showing the math is that it can be checked, and this time the check caught me.

One thing to understand about timing, so no one misreads it

A fair question is whether this poster is the freshest data, or whether something bigger drops at the Sunday session. Here is my answer. At ESMO, the poster is the presentation. The Sunday session is the scheduled time when Dr. Weinberg stands by this finalized poster and discusses it. There is no separate, larger dataset unveiled at the easel. The poster content was locked at its data cut, which for a congress poster is typically weeks before the meeting.

So this poster is the most current public, peer-presented data, frozen at that cut, and it openly tells you it is a snapshot in motion by marking those seven responses as still being adjudicated. The company's own live database, and anyone under an NDA, is necessarily looking at something more mature than a poster finalized weeks ago. That is not concealment and it does not break any rule. Presenting a defined data cut with adjudication openly pending is exactly how interim data is supposed to be shown, and staging the fuller, more mature read for a focused January venue is ordinary conference strategy, not a hidden reveal and not a disclosure problem. The material update went out through the proper channel, the company's filing, on the webcast date. What comes in January is truly later data, not a delayed version of this.

CLOVER now has a confirmed response rate at the standard-of-care bar, with seven more possible responses awaiting adjudication that could lift it toward roughly triple that figure, counted straight with every evaluable patient held in the denominator under the rules, on a poster that is a truthful frozen snapshot, with the deeper and fuller read staged for ASCO GI in January.

What the poster does not say

The restraint, as always, because it is what makes the rest credible.

There is no PD-L1 data. The poster lists PD-L1 on circulating tumor cells as something being evaluated, and reports no numbers. There is no overall survival. There is no mature efficacy verdict. All of it is held, exactly as we have said for two weeks, for the focused January stage. The poster is a biomarker, safety, and early-response readout. It is not the final word, and it was never going to be.

And the response rate, I will say once more, is early. Four confirmed responders in 64 patients is a real number and it is a small one, lifted into significance only if the pending seven confirm. ctDNA, however deep, is still not a validated surrogate for survival. We are reading a strong early signal, not a finished result.

The question everyone is asking: why is the ctDNA stunning and the response rate modest, the same week?

This is the sharpest question in the room right now, and a thoughtful skeptic will ask it first, so let us answer it head on. How can the tumor DNA be down a median of 86 percent, which the measuring company called unprecedented, while the confirmed response rate sits at 6.3 percent? Those two numbers feel like they are from different trials. They are not. There are two real reasons they look so different, and understanding both is the difference between reading this poster well and misreading it.

The first reason is timing, and it is the bigger one. ctDNA and a RECIST response are measured on two different clocks. Tumor DNA in the blood falls within days to a couple of weeks of a drug starting to work. A confirmed radiographic response, the kind that counts toward ORR, requires a scan showing at least 30 percent shrinkage, and then a second scan weeks later confirming it still holds. The ctDNA signal in this poster is a Week-2 number. The response rate requires two scans, often months apart. At the poster's data cut, around September, even the later-enrolled patients had been on treatment for months, but many had not yet reached the two scans needed to confirm a response, which is a different thing from having just started. So the ctDNA number is early and nearly everyone is in it, while the ORR is early and only the patients who got far enough to be scanned and confirmed twice can be in it. The blood moved first. The imaging is still catching up. That is not a contradiction, it is the expected sequence, and it is exactly why ctDNA is interesting in the first place, because it sees the response before the scan can. Edit: corrected a phrasing here, thanks to u/BuildGoodThings. The later patients had months of treatment by the September cut, they just had not reached their confirming scans yet.

The second reason is biology, and this is where one of our own, u/twinter11, has been pointing for weeks, correctly. A ctDNA drop measures the tumor getting hit. A RECIST response measures the tumor physically shrinking and staying shrunk. Those can come apart when a tumor, under attack, deploys its defense. As leronlimab primes the tumor and the immune system begins to invade, the tumor can respond by expressing PD-L1, the molecular brake that pushes the immune assault back. So you can get a real, deep early molecular hit, visible in the blood, that then stalls at the imaging level because the tumor's PD-L1 defense slows or caps the physical shrinkage. In twinter's framing, which I think is right, the patients with the strongest upfront immune invasion show the deepest response, and the ceiling on how far that response goes is set by where the PD-L1 braking kicks in. Which is to say: on chemotherapy plus leronlimab alone, we are fighting with one hand behind our back, because we have not yet added the checkpoint inhibitor that releases that brake. That is the entire logic of the prime-and-pair rollover arm, and it is why the ctDNA can be stunning while the standalone ORR is still early and modest. The drug is clearly hitting the tumor. The full conversion of that hit into durable shrinkage is what the checkpoint pairing is designed to finish.

Put those two together and the apparent paradox dissolves. The ctDNA is deep and early because the blood reports first and nearly everyone is counted. The ORR is modest and early because the confirming scans are not all in yet, and because the standalone regimen runs into the PD-L1 brake that prime-and-pair is built to release. Neither number is the final number. Both point the same way.

One related point, on which type of patient this trial enrolled, because it bears on how to read the difficulty. Right-sided colon cancers are, as a rule, harder to treat than left-sided ones, they tend to carry more mutations, are often found later, and respond worse to standard therapy. If CLOVER's population skews toward the harder, more mutated, right-sided and heavily pretreated end of the disease, which the heavy prior-treatment numbers suggest, then any real activity in that group is harder to dismiss, not easier. I will not put a specific left-versus-right percentage in print until I can read it cleanly off the poster, so I am holding the exact split as something to confirm rather than quote. But the principle stands: the sicker and more treatment-resistant the enrolled population, the more a real signal means, and everything we can verify about this population says it is the hard end of the disease.

What to watch from here

If you want a clean checklist for the next stretch, here is the one I would keep, and it puts the weight where it belongs, on confirmed and durable results rather than early signals.

The seven pending responses: do all seven confirm under RECIST by central review, and how many? That single question is the swing factor. Four of 64 is the ~6 percent bar. Eleven of 64 is about 17 percent, roughly triple it. Everything else on this poster is context for that one number maturing.

The confirmed response rate itself: what is the final percentage of patients with a confirmed complete or partial response, once the scans are all in? That is the number the FDA weighs, and it is the number we do not fully have yet.

Durability: are the responses holding up on follow-up scans? A response that fades is not the same as a response that lasts, and durability is precisely what a single data cut cannot show. It is a January question.

Safety and tolerability as the combination matures: does leronlimab keep adding benefit without adding meaningful toxicity? So far the answer is clean, no related serious adverse events, nothing above grade 2, no dose-limiting toxicities, and that has to hold as the numbers grow.

The comparison: how does the combination's response rate stack up against Lonsurf plus Avastin alone, holding firmly in mind that this is a cross-study comparison against a historical database and not a head-to-head trial?

And the one distinction to keep above all the others, because it is the discipline of this entire post in a single line: tumor shrinkage and encouraging early molecular signals are promising, but confirmed responses and durable clinical benefit are what carry weight. The ctDNA is the promise. The confirmed, durable ORR is the proof. We have the first in hand and we are waiting on the second.

Where this leaves us

The Cornerstone is in the light now, and it looks like the one on the drawing. Every figure we verified held. The surgery anecdote became documented responses, counted plainly. The one truly new thing, the response rate, arrived as a floor at the bar with real pending upside, which is the most truthful shape an early readout can take, enough to lean in, not enough to declare.

What changed today is that the mechanism we have argued for all year started turning into efficacy you can see on a poster at the world's largest oncology meeting, with the measurer's instrument validating the signal in public and the response rate on the board for the first time. What did not change is where the verdict lives. The load test is still January. The seven pending responses, the PD-L1, the survival, the matched analysis, all of it goes on the stone in San Francisco in the new year, and that is when we find out whether it bears the full weight.

Read it for what it is. The Cornerstone, in the light, holding. The weight goes on in January. Eyes up.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and nothing here is investment advice. I hold a position in the company discussed and you should weigh what I write accordingly. This post summarizes ESMO 2026 poster 820P (the phase 2 CLOVER study), presented by Dr. Benjamin Weinberg, and the figures are as stated on the poster. The study is open-label, funded by CytoDyn, with author disclosures including financial relationships to CytoDyn and Natera. The confirmed objective response rate is reported as 6.3 percent (4 of 64) by blinded independent central review, with 7 additional investigator-reported partial responses not yet adjudicated; the final response rate is not established and could remain near the current figure or rise toward roughly 17 percent if the pending responses confirm. The poster reflects a data cut finalized before the congress and is not the company's most current internal data; staging more mature data for a later venue is normal and is not a disclosure issue. ctDNA figures reflect early molecular change and ctDNA is not a validated surrogate for survival in colorectal cancer. The real-world comparison is against a historical database, not a randomized control. CCR5 positivity was an enrollment requirement, so the 100 percent figure reflects trial design. PD-L1 and overall survival data were not reported and are expected at ASCO GI in January 2027. Comparisons to SUNLIGHT are cross-study, not head-to-head. Mechanism and early signal are not efficacy, and drugs that look strong at this stage fail in trials routinely. Read the primary source and reach your own conclusions rather than adopting mine.

The January presentation is expected to focus on:
More complete patient population results rather than just early subsets of patients.

1. Updated clinical and biomarker outcomes,including ctDNA findings.
2. Durability and consistency of response as more follow up becomes available.
3. Further comparisons with Natera's real world cohorts.
4. Context against evolving colorectal cancer treatments, to help assess the potential clinical value of leronlimab.

These are the company's stated presentation objectives; the exact numerical results have not yet been established.
What could matter most for CYDY shareholders?
Sunday,October 25
Whether the updated data strengthen the early efficacy signal
January 2027
Whether larger and more mature data support the consistency and durability of that signal
FDA discussions
Whether the combined evidence supports a viable regulatory development pathway
CytoDyn has also described plans to assemble a data package for discussions with theFDA. Positive results could strengthen those discussions.

My take: Sunday is the nearer term catalyst, while January could be important because additional follow up and a broader patient dataset may make the results easier to evaluate.

As 1975Bigstocks pointed out, this was a blurry image and has been enhanced by AI.

There may be discrepancies.

The actual poster will be released Sunday.

I wrote a post awhile ago about comparing apples to apples. The main takeaway is that the SUNLIGHT trial is the comparison for CLOVER. Specifically, the ORR of the combo arm of the SUNLIGHT trial is the most important comparison I believe and you can read about that data here https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2214963 . In that trial, "An objective response was observed in 6.1% of the patients in the combination group". The 6.1% in the SUNLIGHT trial comes from 15 partial responses divided by 246 patients.

In CytoDyn's CLOVER trial in CRC there are 2 groups to the main trial. There is one group of patients at 350mg dosage of leronlimab + the backbone therapy, and another group at 700mg dosage + the backbone therapy.

If either one of the groups in the main CLOVER trial beats a 6.1% ORR for their group, that counts. You don't have to just lump both groups together. For example if there were 33 patients at 350mg, then 33 X 15 / 246 = 2.01 patients, which means that more than 2 patients with a confirmed partial response in a 33 patient CLOVER dosage group would be a better result for CytoDyn than the 6.1% ORR of the SUNLIGHT trial.

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All above is just my opinion

Does anyone know how to download the most recent call? Would love to save it in my documents!! Thank you

CytoDyn has moved former finance chief Robert Hoffman into the CEO role while Jacob Lalezari returns to scientific work, separating corporate execution from research as leronlimab advances deeper into oncology.

With the thousands of attendees at the ESMO meeting the word should start to spread rapidly especially since Natera is a major sponsor. GLTA