A Silver Lining in a Sea of Red  Kudos to ZIOPHARM Oncology .
Shares were cut by two-thirds today after announcing that its
cancer drug palifosfamide failed to show a strong enough effect
in a phase 3 trial in metastatic soft tissue sarcoma.  That's
bad, really bad, but at least the company isn't twisting the
knife it just got stabbed with.  The primary endpoint of the
study was progression-free survival -- essentially how long it
takes before the tumor starts growing again or the patient dies,
whichever comes first. The control arm that received just
doxorubicin had a progression-free survival of 5.2 months.
Palifosfamide combined with doxorubicin improved progression-
free survival by approximately a month, but that wasn't
statistically significant.  The Independent Data Monitoring
Committee recommended the trial continue to follow patients for
overall survival, but the company said it doesn't plan to
continue the trial. That's the silver lining.  The committee is
made up of scientists that tend to be curio