Oncolytics Biotech Inc Com (NASDAQ:ONCY)

I first got interested in ONCY about 20 years ago. Bought in a couple of times. Lost some money. Since then I've watched a legacy of dilution, reverse stock splits, mismanagement, and stagnation. I feel like the protagonist in The Offspring song Self Esteem. You know, “I know I'm being used, but that's OK because I like the abuse.” How is this company still around? They're like a cockroach with smoke coming off its carapace crawling from the central core of that nuclear reactor that just went critical.

I know what you're thinking: is this guy aware he green-thumbed this? Well, yes I am. Yes, I am. So here it is: I'm a sucker for interesting science, but also for a good story. Instead of altering genes or antibodies or manipulationg a single checkpoint that someone discovered through painstaking work, someone had the bright idea to let evolution home in on whatever various and sundry ways a virus uses to select cells and let them do the job a thousand scientists couldn't figure out. Simple, elegant … or maybe just lucky. I don't care.

So I've been waiting for ONCY to either go away for good or actually find a way to use this idea. Rather than try to fit a virus to a cancer, they've been looking for a cancer to fit a virus. Not sure that would have been my approach, but maybe they got it right. It appears that reovirus has an affinity for KRAS and CEACAM6. So if you can screen for biomarkers indicating these mutation, you may get a high response in that subset. LOXO got a drug approved based on a mutation rather than a cancer type, and I think we'll see more of this approach in the future.

Combination therapy with checkpoint inhibitors looks to be even more effective as reovirus has a way of exposing the cancer cell to the immune system. I think 2020-2021 will be the year that ONCY is either going to break through or flame out for good. But I'm a glass half full sort of guy, and I'm rooting for this one. They've shown some good progress in early trials, but they still have a long way to go. They have some big partners and any success could greatly affect the market cap and therefore he share price of this tiny company.

ONCY is on the verge of having a breakthrough in treatment of a disease of civilization. Now very undervalued and with a possible future standard medication for cancer(s) in hand.