Biotech Alert: Searches spiking for these stocks today

Stay ahead of biotech stocks seeing a surge in interest from retail and financial professional investors with this exclusive recap from The Fly

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

• Ascendis Pharma (ASND), 976% surge in interest
• Apellis Pharmaceuticals (APLS), 728% surge in interest
• Oncosec Medical (ONCS), 124% surge in interest
• Iveric Bio (ISEE), 101% surge in interest
• Bellerophon (BLPH), 28% surge in interest

Pipeline and key clinical candidates for these companies:

Ascendis Pharma says it is applying its platform technology to "build a leading, fully integrated, global biopharmaceutical company focused on making a meaningful difference in patients’ lives" and using its TransCon technologies to "create new and potentially best-in-class therapies."

Apellis Pharmaceuticals says the company "ushered in the first new class of complement medicine in 15 years" with the approval of the first and only targeted C3 therapy. Apellis is advancing this science to "continually develop transformative medicines for people living with rare, retinal, and neurological diseases," it stated.

OncoSec Medical is focused on developing intratumoral immunotherapies to stimulate the patient’s immune system to target cancer cells and eradicate disease. OncoSec’s lead immunotherapy investigational product candidate – TAVO, tavokinogene telseplasmid – enables the intratumoral delivery of DNA-based interleukin-12, a naturally occurring protein with immune-stimulating functions. OncoSec’s clinical pipeline is utilizing TAVO as a potential treatment for multiple cancer indications either as a monotherapy or in combination with checkpoint inhibitors; with the latter potentially enabling OncoSec to address a great unmet medical need in oncology: anti-PD-1 non-responders.

Iveric Bio is a science-driven biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel treatments for retinal diseases with significant unmet medical needs. The Company is committed to having a positive impact on patients’ lives by delivering high-quality, safe and effective treatments designed to address debilitating retinal diseases including earlier stages of age-related macular degeneration.

Bellerophon Therapeutics is focused on developing therapies that address significant unmet medical needs in the treatment of cardiopulmonary diseases. The company is currently developing multiple product candidates under its INOpulse program, a proprietary pulsatile nitric oxide delivery system.

Recent news on these stocks:

April 5

Oppenheimer downgraded Ascendis Pharma to Perform from Outperform. Following discussions held with consultants since Monday morning’s update on TransCon PTH’s NDA review, the firm believes the outcome will be a complete response letter, or CRL, on/around the April 30 PDUFA. Although Oppenheimer can only speculate as to what issues the FDA may raise, what Ascendis may need to do to address such, and to what extent these activities may delay a potential re-submission, the firm gives consideration to a scenario in which the agency would like more comfort that treatment with TransCon PTH over time does not increase fracture risk-a concern that its has touched on in its past work on Ascendis.

April 3

Apellis Pharmaceuticals is drawing takeover interest from larger drugmakers, Michelle Davis and Dinesh Nair of Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The company is speaking to advisors to consider its options. Apellis may also consider seeking partnership or licensing agreement for its ophthalmology product, people said, according to Bloomberg.

OncoSec Medical announced primary endpoint data from the Phase 2 KEYNOTE-695 clinical trial. This global, open-label single-arm trial is evaluating TAVO-EP, OncoSec’s proprietary interleukin 12 encoding plasmid delivered by intratumoral electroporation, in combination with KEYTRUDA, Merck’s (MRK) anti-PD-1 therapy, in patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma who had confirmed disease progression after at least 12 weeks exposure to immediate prior anti-PD-1 antibody therapy. The last patient started treatment in December 2020; clinical database lock occurred in October 2022. The primary endpoint of overall response rate per RECIST v1.1 assessed by blinded independent central review (BICR) was not met. Among 98 efficacy evaluable patients with at least one post-baseline tumor assessment, the confirmed ORR per RECIST v1.1 by BICR assessment is 10.2%, which did not achieve the pre-specified clinically meaningful ORR of greater than or equal to17%. The BICR results for 98 efficacy evaluable patients are lower than the ORR per RECIST v1.1 by investigator assessment of 18.8% for the 101 patients previously reported as the key secondary endpoint of the KEYNOTE-695 trial. BICR assessment, i.e., review of the available images of treated and non-treated lesions by radiologists and oncologists, blinded to investigator assessments, showed that 4 patients had a complete response, 6 patients had a partial response, and 25 patients had stable disease as a best response, for a disease control rate of 35.7%. The durable response rate of greater than or equal to24 weeks is 8.2% and the median duration of response is 25.5 months.

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 15-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.

Keywords: biotech, biotech sector, biotech alert, investingchannel, XBI, SPDR S&P Biotech ETF