While traders remain focused on energy commodities and oil companies, Friday’s best-performing stock happened to flip under most investors’ noses. A small biotech company called Atreca (NASDAQ: BCEL) more than tripled on Friday after the company provided its Q4 results and an update on a highly promising cancer candidate it has been developing for years.
In a phase 1b study testing the monoclonal antibody drug ATRC-101 in solid tumours, Atreca’s drug saw a partial response as a monotherapy, as well as a complete response when combined with Merck’s Keytruda, a drug known for its use in treating skin cancers like melanoma. What’s more, the early test results showed no dose-limiting toxicities; all 47 patients that took the treatment managed to tolerate the drug well.
“The data continue to show a significant association between activity and target expression, and we’ve now observed a partial response in monotherapy along with a complete response in the pembrolizumab combination cohort,” said Atreca CEO John Orwin in a press release. “Given the relationship between activity and target expression, we are preparing to integrate a diagnostic for participant selection.”
Further phase 2 trials are scheduled for sometime later this year, but given how impressive these early results have been, it’s not surprising that many analysts were quick to praise Atreca’s success as well as upgrade their price targets.
This includes Wainwright analyst Joseph Pantginis, who named Atreca as one of his new hot biotech picks going forward. Pantginis also issued a buy rating on Atreca, as well as a $25 per share target price for the company. There aren’t many other analysts covering Atreca before this news, but those that are have become even more bullish on the stock.
Small-cap biotech stocks are notoriously volatile, especially when it comes to newsworthy headlines. Cancer treatments tend always to be well received by investors, but recently we’ve seen drug candidates for Alzheimer’s also attract plenty of attention as well. In recent months, however, biotech stocks haven’t aren’t seeing the same limelight as they did in months prior before this Ukraine situation broke out.
Shares of Atreca were up around 41.5% at first, but as traders piled in, shares shot up to over 211% by the time Friday was over. Even in pre-market trading, shares are still inching up around 8.9% as well. Most analysts covering the small-cap biotech, the few that were, are even more bullish on the company’s prospects. Atreca has a few other candidate treatments right now, although ATRC-101 is obviously their main flagship drug right now.
The sudden gains Atreca made quickly after this news announcement also say a lot about this current market climate as well. There’s generally more volatile than normal in the markets, with traders jittery about the expected interest rate hikes coming soon as well as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Atreca Company Profile
Atreca Inc is a biopharmaceutical company utilizing its differentiated platform to discover and develop novel antibody-based immunotherapeutics to treat a range of solid tumor types. The company’s product candidate, ATRC-101, is a monoclonal antibody in preclinical development with a novel mechanism of action and target derived from an antibody identified using its discovery platform. – Warrior Trading News
