The reams of cancer research will take time for Wall Street to consider.
Dreamstime
Shares of biotechs developing cancer drugs are soaring—or plunging—after dozens of companies released data in advance of a key cancer conference next month.
Top movers included Allogene Therapeutics (ticker: ALLO), up 11.4% in premarket trading, Adaptimmune Therapeutics (ADAP), up 8.2%; and Black Diamond Therapeutics (BDTX), down 28.5%.
The data dump, which came late Wednesday as an embargo lifted on scientific abstracts accepted by the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s June conference, will take time for investors to work through. Analysts issued a flood of notes late Wednesday and into Thursday, offering quick takes on the reams of information.
The ASCO conference itself, which begins June 4, will give investors more detail and context for the many bits of news on offer. But the early reactions Thursday morning give some clues as to how investors see the future of cancer care.
The biggest gainer early Thursday was Allogene, which presented data late Wednesday that it said it also planned to feature in an ASCO poster, on two CAR T therapies known as ALLO-501 and ALLO-501A being tested in forms of lymphoma. It said it plans to begin a Phase 2 trial by the end of the year.
The company said that 50% of all patients in a small Phase 1 trial saw a disappearance of all cancer, for a complete-response rate of 50%. The overall response rate, which includes patients who saw some response to the treatment, was 75%.
Cowen analyst Marc Frahm wrote Thursday that the data establish a “strong proof of concept” and imply that ALLO-501A “is likely to become a standard CD19 CAR-T therapy.”
Shares of Allogene, which closed at $28.47 on Wednesday, were trading at $31.70 early Thursday.
Also up sharply was Adaptimmune, which reported an overall response rate of 41%, and two complete responses, in a trial of a cell therapy called afami-cel on 37 patients with synovial sarcoma. The company said that the data would support a filing for regulatory approval next year.
“We think investors are currently assigning ~50% or so probability of success of this program and we think these data increase the probability by at least 25%,” Citi Research analyst Mohit Bansal wrote in a note out Thursday. “We also think that this confirmation would increase investor confidence in the platform and bodes well for other solid tumor programs which are expected to read out later this year.”
Adaptimmune shares, which closed at $4.90 on Wednesday, were trading at $5.28 early Thursday.
Black Diamond, meanwhile, another cancer-focused biotech, disclosed preliminary efficacy data on a drug called BDTX-189, being tested in patients with advanced solid tumors. The company said that “evidence of anti-cancer activity was observed” among the recipients, a group that had already been treated with other drugs. Yet the levels of activity observed seem to have disappointed investors. The stock, which closed at $22.23 on Wednesday, was trading at $16.18 early Thursday.
Analysts seemed less perturbed. In a note out early Thursday. Cowen’s Frahm highlighted positive safety results on BDTX-189. “Efficacy data was extremely early and should be interpreted in that light,” he wrote. “We are hopeful that as dedicated expansion cohort work begins, this early signal can be enriched to a level that would be sufficient to support FDA approval(s) in specific mutation/tumor pairs.”
Big biopharma firms offered new cancer data, as well, including Amgen (AMGN), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Merck (MRK), and others. Citi Research analyst Andrew Baum, who covers the big pharma firms, called this year’s ASCO “quiet” in a note out early Thursday. The big biopharma stocks were mostly flat Thursday morning.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]
