Star Scientific Inc. (STSI: Quote) Monday commented on a January 23, 2013, column appearing on TheStreet.com. The company said that the piece contains numerous false and misleading statements regarding the company’s anatabine research and the initial results of the ASAP Human Thyroid health Study released by Star Scientific on January 7, 2013.
As reported in the Company’s January 7, 2013, press release: “The preliminary examination of the primary outcomes shows a clear and statistically significant difference in the treated group as compared to the placebo group by the end of the trial, with declines in anti-thyroglobulin antibody levels. Anatabine subjects also tended toward a reduction in thyroid gland vascularity on ultrasound relative to placebo.”
The ASAP study, which examines the impact of anatabine dietary supplementation on thyroid health, was conducted by Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals, the Company’s subsidiary. The study was not sponsored by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Company never reported otherwise. Indeed, when Star Scientific first announced IRB approval of this study on February 9, 2012, it noted that the study was being conducted by Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals at sites in Texas, Illinois, and Florida.
The company noted that the statement that there is no science backing that anatabine reduces inflammation similarly is completely false. Since 2011, Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals and researchers at the Roskamp Institute have completed and reported on a number of studies designed to assess the ability of the Company’s anatabine compound to lower chronic inflammation in a variety of pre-clinical (non-human) and clinical (human) settings.
The Street.com article’s implication or suggestion that Johns Hopkins has had no involvement in anatabine research is also false. As previously reported, a preclinical investigator-initiated and independently funded study from Johns Hopkins examined the effect of anatabine supplementation on autoimmune thyroiditis in a mouse model and that research was recently published in an article entitled, “Anatabine Ameliorates Experimental Autoimmune Thyroiditis” in the Endocrine Society’s journal, Endocrinology.
Star Scientific noted that the author of the article in TheStreet.com, Adam Feuerstein, has published a number of negative articles regarding the ompany and its research on anatabine. The company said it believed that investors and consumers of its Anatabloc product would be well advised to view any such articles by this author or publications regarding the company in TheStreet.com with substantial skepticism, given the misstatements and misinformation that the author disseminates.
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by RTT Staff Writer
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