Feuerstein's Biotech-Stock Mailbag: Delcath

This column originally posted on RealMoney.com at 7:03 a.m. EDT. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

My discussion of Sangamo BioSciences (SGMO Quote - Cramer on SGMO - Stock Picks) in the June 13 Biotech Mailbag prompted a fusillade of angry emails from Sangamo investors who love the company and its lead diabetic neuropathy drug, SB-509, but hate, hate, hate Brean Murray analyst Jonathan Aschoff for his bearish views of the biotech.

Oh boy, do these Sangamoans despise Aschoff. They're a bit ticked off at me, too, for airing the analyst's views, which they believe are dead wrong and tied somehow to a hedge-fund short-selling conspiracy the goal of which is to decimate Sangamo and its stock price, all while ensuring that diabetic neuropathy patients are denied access to the one drug they so desperately need.

Or something like that. After a while, the conspiracy theories tend to blend together and I lose track; one overreaching emailer even likened Aschoff's research notes and methods to economic terrorism.

I don't want to be entirely dismissive of the Sangamoans because some of their complaints do have merit. For one, Aschoff is wrong to brush off the validity of the nerve-health tests Sangamo used in its phase Ib study. In particular, the so-called Neuropathy Impairment in the Lower Limbs, or NIS-LL, seems to be as good an instrument as any.

As many of the Sangamoans pointed out correctly, Genentech (DNA Quote - Cramer on DNA - Stock Picks), with guidance from the Food and Drug Administration, used the NIS-LL instrument to capture the primary endpoint of a phase III study conducted in 1999. (The study failed.)

A 1999 article in European Neurology lays out a convincing case for use of the NIS-LL in diabetic neuropathy clinical trials, so I don't see why Sangamo should get dinged for using it as well.

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