Ziopharm is up a decent chunk today, icing on the cake for anyone who found the stub tasty at October lows under 2.5. Nevertheless, I don't see this upswing carrying on past the company's presentations at AACR at the beginning of December. It seems all Ziopharm had to do was make noise about CAR-T to tack on 40M in market cap, but it will soon become apparent that their efforts are very preliminary and they are far behind Kite, Juno, and Novartis among others. I expect the updates on Ad-RTS-IL-12 to be immaterial as well. Meanwhile, the company seems to be brushing MATISSE under the rug, as a promised interim OS analysis has failed to materialize. Ziopharm mutters something about the OS data being presented at a meeting in 2015 in their latest 10Q. Darinaparsin? The phase I trial of the oral formulation is fully enrolled, same as it was six months ago. Don't ask about indibulin. The company doesn't mention it even though it is still supposedly in development for breast cancer.

I know no one cares anymore about Ziopharm's small molecule platform. But the fact that they still find it necessary to obfuscate the failures rather than simply concede defeat in that area and move forward is an indication that management simply cannot be trusted. The company is promotional and cash is running low, which tells me that anyone buying into a run-up in the stock is going to get burned.