www.lesswrong.com/posts/iyatrrJaHysuhrqXe/the-ballad-of-tigit

Novartis's own press release says the ociperlimab agreement was signed on December 20, 2021, and that "Novartis will make an upfront payment to BeiGene of USD 300 million." That directly contradicts the post's statement that Novartis paid $300 million in early 2021.

The same release also describes the transaction as an "option, collaboration and license agreement" under which Novartis would obtain broader development and commercialization rights if it exercised the option. So the post is not just early on timing; it also compresses the deal structure into a simpler "paid ... for co-development rights" description than the official announcement uses.

The post describes SKYSCRAPER-01 as being "tested on an ostensibly curable type of lung cancer," but Roche's own study description says the trial enrolled patients with "first-line PD-L1-high locally advanced, unresectable or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer." That is an advanced-disease population, not the sort of setting usually described as curable.

The National Cancer Institute's patient guidance likewise states that "For most people with non-small cell lung cancer, current treatments do not cure the cancer." This directly conflicts with characterizing the SKYSCRAPER-01 population as an "ostensibly curable" type of lung cancer.

So the problem here is not a subtle framing dispute: the trial population was advanced unresectable/metastatic NSCLC, and authoritative cancer sources do not describe that setting as generally curable.