While the markets appear to a bit quieter in comparison to earlier this week, there were still a few noteworthy tickers that saw some major moves. On Wednesday, the biggest winner was a small-cap biotech stock called Five Prime Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FPRX). While relatively obscure, the company made headlines after it announced positive phase 2 trial results for its promising stomach cancer drug, which had met its primary endpoint.
Stomach (or gastric) cancer is a relatively difficult type of cancer to treat, with approximately 28,000 patients in the U.S. getting diagnosed with the disease each year. As such, the demand for potential drug treatments in this area is quite high. Five Prime’s candidate, known as bemarituzumab (or FPA144), was found to be effective in treating patients that have a specific type of tumor that’s present in around 30% of all gastric cancer patients worldwide.
The study showed the drug to improve patient survival times by a fair margin, from 7.4 months to 9.5 months in patients who took the drug with chemotherapy vs chemotherapy alone. While this might not seem that impressive to an average person, it’s a significant enough difference in the biotech world to justify a drug candidate’s further development.
Five Prime’s management team said that bemarituzumab could potentially treat other conditions, such as lung, breast, ovarian, pancreatic, and other types of cancers. However, that’s still pretty far off into the future for right now, especially since phase 3 tests tend to be very expensive for small-cap biotech firms like Five Prime.
Shares were up as much as 400% in response to the impressive news, although the stock ended the day up around 255% instead. It’s an impressive jump for a small-cap biotech stock like Five Prime, but it happens from time to time in this sector. The company’s real question is whether or not its phase 3 trial will live up to the now lofty expectations set for it going forward. Either way, we won’t know the results for at least a year or two, but cautious investors should keep in mind that a sizeable portion of drugs fail during phase 3 tests.
Five Prime Therapeutics Company Profile
Five Prime Therapeutics Inc is a biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing protein therapeutics for diseases. The company’s product candidates address patient populations for which therapies are still needed. Its is focused on advancing its internal pipeline and retaining rights for products in targeted specialty markets. It also seeks to establish additional collaborations to supplement its internal development capabilities. These collaborations generate additional funding in order to further validate the company’s technology. It has the following product in pipeline: Cabiralizumab, FPA150, Bemarituzumab and Immuno-Oncology. – Warrior Trading News
