Biotech Alert: Searches spiking for these stocks today

These names in the biotech sector are seeing a substantial increase in search activity today, as determined by InvestingChannel. They include:

• Eton Pharmaceuticals (ETON), 3,484% surge in interest
• IGM Biosciences (IGMS), 1,003% surge in interest
• Atreca (BCEL), 189% surge in interest

Pipeline and key clinical candidates for these companies:

Eton Pharmaceuticals is focused on developing, acquiring, and commercializing treatments for rare diseases. The company currently commercializes ALKINDI SPRINKLE and Carglumic Acid tablets and has four additional rare disease products under development, including dehydrated alcohol injection and the ZENEO hydrocortisone autoinjector.

IGM Biosciences is a clinical-stage biotechnology company committed to developing and delivering a new class of medicines to treat patients with cancer, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases and infectious diseases. IGM’s pipeline of clinical and preclinical assets is based on the IgM antibody, which has 10 binding sites compared to conventional IgG antibodies with only 2 binding sites. IGM also has an exclusive worldwide collaboration agreement with Sanofi to create, develop, manufacture, and commercialize IgM antibody agonists against oncology and immunology and inflammation targets.

Atreca is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel antibody-based therapeutics generated by its differentiated discovery platform, with a focus on antibody-drug conjugates. Atreca’s platform allows access to an unexplored landscape in oncology through the identification of unique antibody-target pairs generated by the human immune system during an active immune response against tumors. These antibodies provide the basis for a pipeline of first-in-class oncology programs led by APN-497444, an ADC targeting a novel tumor glycan, in addition to MAM01/ATRC-501, a clinical candidate licensed to the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute for the prevention of malaria.

Recent news on these stocks:

August 14

Wedbush downgraded Atreca to Neutral from Outperform with a price target of $1, down from $4. The firm noted Atreca discontinued lead asset ATRC-101 this quarter, citing financial considerations of next steps for the program. Wedbush views this as a necessary development considering a light cash runway, marginally extended to early 2024 with additional cuts to workforce and program expenditures. The company will focus current efforts on preclinical ADC program APN-497444, lead candidate selection for which is expected in 2023.

August 11

H.C. Wainwright raised the firm’s price target on Eton Pharmaceuticals to $10 from $9 and kept a Buy rating on the shares following the company’s Q2 beat.

August 8

Stifel lowered the firm’s price target on IGM Biosciences to $26 from $49 and kept a Buy rating on the shares. It has been a “challenging stretch” for the stock and the limited incremental data points through the year will likely keep the stock range-bound in the near term, the analyst told investors. The current valuation, however, does not reflect the competitive differentiation of both pipeline and platform. The target price reduction reflects extended aplitabart commercialization timelines, removal of imvotamab sales estimates, and revised financing assumptions, Stifel said.

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About “Biotech Alert”

The Fly will report on a selection of biotech stocks seeing a surge in interest from retail and financial professional investors, based on data from InvestingChannel.

This Fly exclusive recap reveals the biotech stocks that are seeing a spike in searches among the 20-plus million retail and financial professional investors through InvestingChannel’s online financial news media ecosystem.

This increased attention from the investors may be in response to, or advance of, outsized moves for stocks in the biotech sector, which tend to be volatile and prone to sharp swings in share price around binary events such as clinical study results and FDA approvals.