These names in the biotech sector are seeing a substantial increase in search activity today, as determined by InvestingChannel. They include:
Pipeline and key clinical candidates for these companies:
Akebia Therapeutics says it is a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company that says its purpose is "to better the lives of people impacted by kidney disease."
Catalyst says it is "committed to developing and commercializing innovative first-in-class medicines that address rare neurological and epileptic diseases". Catalyst's flagship U.S. commercial product is Firdapse tablets 10 mg, approved for the treatment of Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome for adults and for children ages six to seventeen. In January 2023, Catalyst acquired the U.S. commercial rights to Fycompa CIII, a prescription medicine approved in people with epilepsy aged four and older alone or with other medicines to treat partial-onset seizures with or without secondarily generalized seizures and with other medicines to treat primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures for people with epilepsy aged 12 and older.
Anavex Life Sciences Corp. is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of novel therapeutics for the treatment of neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental, and neuropsychiatric disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, Rett syndrome, and other central nervous system diseases, pain, and various types of cancer. Anavex's lead drug candidate, ANAVEX 2-73, has successfully completed a Phase 2a and a Phase 2b/3 clinical trial for Alzheimer's disease, a Phase 2 proof-of-concept study in Parkinson's disease dementia, and both a Phase 2 and a Phase 3 study in adult patients and one Phase 2/3 study in pediatric patients with Rett syndrome.
Sarepta Therapeutics engineers precision genetic medicine for rare diseases. The company holds leadership positions in Duchenne muscular dystrophy, or DMD, and limb-girdle muscular dystrophies, or LGMDs, and currently has more than 40 programs in various stages of development. Sarepta's pipeline is driven by its multi-platform Precision Genetic Medicine Engine in gene therapy, RNA and gene editing.
Allogene Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering the development of allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor T cell products for cancer and autoimmune disease. Led by a management team with significant experience in cell therapy, Allogene is developing a pipeline of "off-the-shelf" CAR T cell product candidates with the goal of delivering readily available cell therapy on-demand, more reliably, and at greater scale to more patients.
Oncolytics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing pelareorep, an intravenously delivered immunotherapeutic agent. Pelareorep has demonstrated "promising" results in two randomized Phase 2 studies in metastatic breast cancer and Phase 1 and 2 studies in pancreatic cancer, the company says. It acts by inducing anti-cancer immune responses and promotes an inflamed tumor phenotype — turning "cold" tumors "hot" — through innate and adaptive immune responses to treat a variety of cancers.
Acadia Pharmaceuticals says it is advancing "breakthroughs in neuroscience to elevate life." The company developed and commercialized what it identifies as "the first and only approved therapies" for hallucinations and delusions associated with Parkinson's disease psychosis and for the treatment of Rett syndrome. Acadia's clinical-stage development efforts are focused on treating the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease psychosis and neuropsychiatric symptoms in central nervous system disorders.
Editas Medicine is focused on translating the power and potential of the CRISPR/Cas12a and CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing systems into a robust pipeline of treatments for people living with serious diseases around the world. Editas Medicine aims to discover, develop, manufacture, and commercialize transformative, durable, precision genomic medicines for a broad class of diseases. Editas Medicine is the exclusive licensee of Broad Institute's Cas12a patent estate and Broad Institute and Harvard University's Cas9 patent estates for human medicines.
Checkpoint Therapeutics is focused on the acquisition, development and commercialization of novel treatments for patients with solid tumor cancers. Checkpoint is evaluating its lead antibody product candidate, cosibelimab in an ongoing global, open-label, multicohort Phase 1 clinical trial in checkpoint therapy-naive patients with selected recurrent or metastatic cancers, including ongoing cohorts in locally advanced and metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, or "cSCC," intended to support one or more applications for marketing approval. Checkpoint is evaluating its lead small-molecule, targeted anti-cancer agent, olafertinib, formerly CK-101, as a potential new treatment for patients with EGFR mutation-positive non-small cell lung cancer.
Recent news on these stocks:
November 26
Anavex Life Sciences announced the submission of the blarcamesine Marketing Authorization Application, MAA, to the European Medicines Agency, EMA. The MAA submission is for the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease. Overall, blarcamesine, a small molecule administered orally once daily, demonstrated clinically meaningful improvement over 48 weeks with primary endpoint ADAS-Cog13 score being larger than 2 points. This suggests superior numerical clinical efficacy compared to approved therapies while also slowing neurodegeneration in early AD patients. Blarcamesine's safety profile indicates not requiring routine MRI monitoring, and the advantage of blarcamesine is that it is a small oral molecule that exerts clinical benefits on cognition and neurodegeneration and could be appealing because of its easy and convenient route of administration and good comparative safety profile.
Sarepta Therapeutics announced an exclusive global licensing and collaboration agreement with Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (ARWR). Sarepta will obtain exclusive global rights to multiple clinical, preclinical, and discovery-stage programs for rare, genetic diseases of the muscle, central nervous system CNS , and the lungs. Under the terms of the agreement, Sarepta will pay Arrowhead an upfront payment of $500M and an equity investment of $325 million in Arrowhead common stock, priced at a 35% premium to the 30-day volume weighted average price prior to the announcement of the agreement. Arrowhead will also receive $250M to be paid in annual installments of $50M over five years, in addition to being eligible for future milestone payments and royalties.
Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc. announced it has entered into an exclusive worldwide license agreement with Saniona for the development and commercialization of SAN711, a first-in-class, highly selective GABAA-alpha3 positive allosteric modulator. The first indication the Company plans to pursue is development of SAN711 for essential tremor, a neurological condition that includes shaking or trembling movements in one or more parts of the body. Acadia is planning to initiate a Phase 2 study of SAN711 in essential tremor in 2026.
November 25
BofA downgraded Editas Medicine to Underperform from Buy with a price target of $1, down from $13, after the company recently announced plans to out-license their reni-cel program, which the firm sees lowering the impact of upcoming updates from the RUBY SCD trial at ASH and EdiTHAL thalassemia trial expected by year-end 2024. Deprioritizing reni-cel does make sense from a cash burn perspective, but it removes a significant portion of the firm's valuation with partner interest remaining to be seen. Given the increasingly competitive nature of SCD and thalassemia development, the firm sees the potential value of reni-cel waning as the field looks to in vivo therapies as the next logical step, adds the analyst, who notes that Editas' in vivo HSC program is still "several years from prime time."
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About "Biotech Alert"
The Fly will report on a selection of biotech stocks seeing a surge in interest from retail and financial professional investors, based on data from InvestingChannel.
This Fly exclusive recap reveals the biotech stocks that are seeing a spike in searches among the 20-plus million retail and financial professional investors through InvestingChannel's online financial news media ecosystem.
This increased attention from the investors may be in response to, or advance of, outsized moves for stocks in the biotech sector, which tend to be volatile and prone to sharp swings in share price around binary events such as clinical study results and FDA approvals.
Akebia
+0.06 (+2.92%)
Catalyst Pharmaceuticals
-0.235 (-1.05%)
Anavex
+0.59 (+6.53%)
Sarepta
-3.15 (-2.28%)
Allogene Therapeutics
+0.01 (+0.40%)
Oncolytics
+
Acadia Pharmaceuticals
+0.01 (+0.06%)
Editas Medicine
+0.04 (+1.81%)
Checkpoint Therapeutics
+0.04 (+0.94%)