Here's Why Verastem Inc (NASDAQ:VSTM) Could Soar Today

Here is one our readers need to be quick on. Verastem Inc (NASDAQ:VSTM) rose a little over 12% during the session on Wednesday and is up more than 3% on premarket activity ahead of the bell today. At first glance, it looks as though the move is pure volatility. There have been no press releases, no fresh news and nothing being filed with the SEC this week – in other words, the driver behind action is in unclear.That is until you take a look at this release, dated August 8.Here's the closing statement from said release:

"…we look forward to reporting top-line data from the Phase 3 DUO™ study…currently expected in the latter part of summer 2017.”

If we assume that summer ends at the end of August, which is reasonable especially from a market perspective, the data should hit press today. This is a major trial for Verastem and, if the numbers come out as positive, and if they do hit press today, the company is going to run into the weekend.So what are we looking out for?The trial in question is investigating the safety and efficacy of a drug called Duvelisib in a combined target indication of relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia and small lymphocytic lymphoma (CLL/SLL). We actually looked at this one back in early July as part of this piece, so anybody looking to get clued in on the detail as to how this drug works might want to check that out. VSTM DailyAs a brief introduction, however, it is designed to alter that microenvironment in which tumors reside in order to make said environment prohibitive to growth and reproduction of cancer cells.Specifically, it is designed to inhibit two enzymes called phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-delta and PI3K-gamma. Both of these enzymes are involved in cell proliferation and differentiation, two of the overriding characteristics of cancer cells, and the idea is that through their inhibition, the drug can slow or altogether stop the proliferation that characterizes the disease (and both make it incredibly difficult to treat and causes the often unstoppable spread of cancer cells throughout the body, especially in these sorts of blood type cancers).The trial enrolled 300 people and randomized them 1:1 to receive either duvelisib or ofatumumab, the latter of which is an already well-established standard of care oncology treatment used in both of these patient populations. As is the gold standard in these trials (i.e. those set up to pitch one investigative cancer drug against an already established cancer drug), the primary endpoint of the trial is progression free survival (PFS) and this combines with a number of key secondary endpoints including overall response rate (ORR), overall survival (OS), duration of response (DOR) and safety.In terms of what we are looking for specifically, then, we want to see a statistically significant difference (an improvement) in PFS (and also ideally OS, ORR and DOR) between the active and the control arm of the study. In other words, we want to see the patients that have received duvelisib living longer, and their cancer progressing to a lower degree, than those who have received ofatumumab. That is from a purely quantitative point of view, of course. It would be nice to see all of these patients recover. For Verastem to hit on its endpoints, however, that can't happen.Keep in mind that this is a classic biotech binary play. Sure, the company is running into the release, but if the trial fails, it's going to take a real hit to its market capitalization on the news.If it succeeds, however, there's a double digit upside on offer for anyone that took a position ahead of the report.Check out our previous coverage of this one here. We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on VSTM, sign up below!Image courtesy of Ed Uthman via FlickrDisclosure: We have no position in VSTM and and have not been compensated for this article.