Opexa Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: OPXA)
Opexa Therapeutics, Inc. (OPXA), a biopharmaceutical company announced on Monday four new key patents regarding its T-cell immunotherapy platform. With the recent new patents, this brings Opexa’s patent portfolio total up to 160 patents.
Opexa Therapeutics, Inc. CEO’s Comments
“We are very pleased with the issuance of the new European patents and the continued growth of our intellectual property portfolio,” stated Neil K. Warma, President and Chief Executive Officer of Opexa. “This family of patents is key to protecting and strengthening our intellectual property position surrounding our personalized T-cell immunotherapy for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. We continue to be aggressive in the strengthening of our patent estate and have also recently submitted new patent applications related to our proprietary epitope screening assay and potency assay.” Business Wire
OPXA Technical Analysis
OPXA gapped up in price yesterday to $3.46, up from the prior day’s close of $3.06 which is a 13% increase in price based on favorable news. Taking a look at the daily chart, we can see the last time the stock traded above this price level was on September 25th when the stock closed at $3.68. Taking a further look down the chart we can see the stock traded at $4.00 on September 18th but was unable to break through it. That should be the first resistance level for this current move up. The stock did reach pre market highs of $3.87, meaning that it gave back $0.31 at the open, or equivalent to 8%. For trading purposes, my entry point would have been $3.50 looking for a run to the pre market high level of $3.87. My stop loss would have been $3.40 fearing anything below that and the stock would start to fill in the gap up.
Company Profile
Opexa Therapeutics, Inc. (Opexa), incorporated on March 15, 1991, is a biopharmaceutical company developing a personalized immunotherapy with the potential to treat various illnesses, including multiple sclerosis (MS), as well as other autoimmune diseases, such as neuromyelitis optica (NMO). These therapies are based on the Company’s T-cell technology. It is engaged in the field of Precision Immunotherapy. The Company’s product candidates include Tcelna and OPX-212. Tcelna and OPX-212 are not approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or other global regulatory agencies for marketing.
Tcelna is an autologous T-cell immunotherapy that is being developed for the treatment of secondary progressive MS (SPMS) and is tailored to each patient’s immune response profile to myelin. Tcelna is designed to reduce the number and/or functional activity of specific subsets of myelin-reactive T-cells (MRTCs) known to attack myelin. Tcelna is manufactured using its method for the production of an autologous T-cell product, which comprises the collection of blood from the MS patient and the expansion of MRTCs from the blood. Upon completion of the manufacturing process, an annual course of therapy consisting of five doses is cryopreserved. At each dosing time point, a single dose of Tcelna is formulated and attenuated by irradiation before returning the final product to the clinical site for subcutaneous administration to the patient. Tcelna has received Fast Track designation from the FDA in SPMS.
In addition to the Company’s ongoing clinical development of Tcelna, the Company is also developing OPX-212 as an autologous T-cell immunotherapy for the treatment of NMO. NMO is an autoimmune disorder in which immune system cells and antibodies attack and destroy astrocytic/myelin cells in the optic nerves and the spinal cord leading to demyelination and loss of axons. OPX-212 is tailored to each patient’s immune response to a protein, aquaporin-4, which is the targeted antigen in NMO. In NMO, the immune system recognizes aquaporin-4 as foreign, thus triggering the attack. Reuters
