Celsion Corporation (NASDAQ: CLSN)
Celsion Corporation (CLSN), an oncology drug development company made an announcement Monday stating positive preclinical data for its GEN-1 IL-12 immunotherapy in combination with Avastin and Doxil for ovarian cancer study. The study showed a greater than 98% reduction in tumor burden when compared to the control group.
Celsion Corporation Senior VP and Chief Medical Officer’s Comments
“The immune stimulating nature of GEN-1 in combination with Avastin® and Doxil® makes for an ideal therapy, bolstering the anti-cancer effect beyond what has been observed when used alone,” said Nicholas Borys, M.D., senior vice president and chief medical officer of Celsion. “Results from this study are highly encouraging and suggest that when these therapies are combined, they offer the potential to significantly reduce tumor burden and disease progression in this highly aggressive cancer in patients who have failed first line platinum-based therapies.” PR Newswire
CLSN Technical Analysis
CLSN gapped up in price yesterday to $2.00, up from Friday’s close of $1.84, which is a 9% 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 22nd when the stock closed at $2.00. Taking a further look back on the chart we can see the stock has been falling since July 24th when the stock was trading at $2.58. There was a little rebound spike that ended on September 8th when the stock closed at $2.15. I would use that price as my first possible resistance for the current spike up. The stock has a low float of 19.16 million shares traded on over 8 times the normal daily trading volume. Both of these factors make the stock a good candidate for the gap and go strategy. The stock did reach pre market highs of $2.05, meaning that it only gave back $0.05 at the open equivalent to 2%. For trading purposes, my entry point would have been $2.00 looking for a move to $2.15. My stop loss would have been $1.90 fearing anything below that and the stock’s move up would have stalled.
Company Profile
Celsion Corporation (Celsion), incorporated on May 17, 2000, is an oncology drug development company. The Company is focused on developing a portfolio of cancer treatments, including directed chemotherapies, immunotherapies and ribonucleic acid (RNA)- or deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)-based therapies. Its lead program is ThermoDox, a heat-activated liposomal encapsulation of doxorubicin, which is in Phase III clinical trial for the treatment of primary liver cancer (the OPTIMA Study) and a Phase II clinical trial for the treatment of recurrent chest wall breast cancer (the DIGNITY Study). Its pipeline also includes GEN-1, a DNA-based immunotherapy for the localized treatment of ovarian and brain cancers. The Company has three platform technologies for the development of treatments for those suffering with difficult-to-treat forms of cancer, nucleic acid-based immunotherapies and other anti-cancer DNA or RNA therapies, including TheraPlas and TheraSilence. Reuters
