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: 

• Satsuma Pharmaceuticals (STSA), 14,525% surge in interest
• Prometheus Biosciences (RXDX), 3,654% surge in interest
• ContraFect (CFRX), 2,050% surge in interest
• Bellicum Pharma (BLCM), 1,311% surge in interest
• Gamida Cell (GMDA), 853% surge in interest

Pipeline and key clinical candidates for these companies:

Satsuma Pharmaceuticals is developing a novel therapeutic product, STS101, for the acute treatment of migraine. STS101 is a unique and proprietary nasal powder formulation of the well-established anti-migraine drug, dihydroergotamine mesylate, or DHE, administered via Satsuma’s proprietary nasal delivery device.

Prometheus Biosciences has a precision medicine approach for the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel therapeutic and companion diagnostic products for the treatment of immune-mediated diseases. The company’s precision medicine platform, Prometheus360, combines proprietary machine learning-based analytical approaches with what the company calls "one of the world’s largest gastrointestinal bioinformatics databases to identify novel therapeutic targets and develop therapeutic candidates to engage those targets."

ContraFect is a biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of DLAs, including lysins and amurin peptides, as new medical modalities for the treatment of life-threatening, antibiotic-resistant infections. The company has completed a Phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of Staph aureus bacteremia, including endocarditis, with its lead lysin candidate, exebacase, which is the first lysin to enter clinical studies in the U.S. Exebacase was granted Breakthrough Therapy designation by the FDA for the treatment of MRSA bloodstream infections, including right-sided endocarditis, when used in addition to SOC anti-staphylococcal antibiotics.

Bellicum is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company whose "next-generation product candidates are differentiated by powerful cell signaling technologies designed to produce more effective CAR-T cell therapies," the company has stated. Bellicum’s GoCAR-T product candidates, BPX-601 and BPX-603, are "designed to be more efficacious CAR-T cell products capable of overriding key immune inhibitory mechanisms."

Gamida Cell is at work on an immunotherapy pipeline of potentially curative cell therapy candidates for patients with solid tumor and blood cancers and other serious blood diseases. These include omidubicel, an investigational product with potential as a life-saving alternative for patients in need of bone marrow transplant, and a line of modified and unmodified NAM-enabled NK cells targeted at solid tumor and hematological malignancies.

Recent news on these stocks:

April 19

H.C. Wainwright analyst Vernon Bernardino raised the firm’s price target on Gamida Cell to $11 from $5 and kept a Buy rating on the shares after the FDA approved the company’s cell therapy Omisirge for use in patients with hematologic malignancies who are undergoing umbilical cord blood transplantation following myeloablative conditioning. With its cost of therapy set at $338,000, the firm believes "Omisirge pricing is in a sweet spot," as this is well below the cost for other cell-based therapies used to treat hematological cancers and the firm is adjusting its models for Omisirge’s pricing, which it previously estimated could initially cost $200,000.

April 18

H.C. Wainwright downgraded Satsuma Pharmaceuticals to Neutral from Buy without a price target after the company agreed to be acquired by Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories. The analyst believes STS101 is likely best-in-class and that an ultimate commercial partnership should yield contingent value rights value for Satsuma. However, citing the likely limited visibility from here on out, and uncertain terms of an eventual SNBL STS101 commercial deal, the firm thinks it is prudent to downgrade the shares.

RBC Capital downgraded Prometheus to Sector Perform from Outperform with a price target of $200, up from $140, after Merck (MRK) announced plans to acquire the company for $10.8B in cash, or $200 per share. The acquisition highlights the attractive opportunity from RXDX’s PRA023, the analyst told investors in a research note. The firm believes the deal is likely to go through.

April 13

Maxim analyst Jason McCarthy upgraded ContraFect to Buy from Hold with a $3 price target. The firm is positive on the company’s opportunity for exebacase in prosthetic joint infections, or PJIs, driven by staphylococcus infections, which it is now factoring into its valuation model. A Phase 1b/2 single-center study in France was initiated on April 3rd, with the first patient expected to be dosed soon, and the company is also going to have several presentations at the ECCMID meeting this weekend, highlighting the potential of exebacase and lysin candidate CF-370 in infections driven by gram-positive and gram-negative bugs, respectively, the analyst tells investors in a research note.

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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.

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