former med student for equity research about pre-hire assignment

Was just curious on how much scientific background you had since I would say your answer should vary based on whether you have more of a medical background or hard science background - you want to focus your pitch on things you can sound like an expert on since questions will arise if you discuss the write up with your analyst. Generally, I would first consider the mechanism of action and whether other similar assets have comparable pre-clinical data you can assess to read-through to probability of clinical success (I.e. how does it affect the target of interest pre-clinically and is that target a well-validated clinical target or completely novel; if it’s not completely novel maybe highlight what management has said previously about why their molecule is differentiated and is likely to have a) improved efficacy or b) improved safety). Next I would consider trial design and think about the bar they’ve set - are they evaluating the drug against an active comparator, to what extent are patients pre-treated, are there any factors that could increase efficacy of the active drug (stratify by bio marker status, only select high risk patients) or potentially contribute to outperformance by the comparator arm. Finally I would discuss what success means from a clinical and commercial context - what primary endpoints are they evaluating and what’s the significance of each in relation to the SoC and the current unmet need (I.e. is Adverse Event X a common feature of current drugs used to treat the disease or is there a high failure rate for a subgroup of patients).