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Biotech Alert: Searches spiking for these stocks today
The Fly

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: 

  • Crinetics Pharmaceuticals (CRNX), 1,175% surge in interest
  • Ideaya Biosciences (IDYA), 825% surge in interest
  • Applied Therapeutics (APLT), 514% surge in interest
  • Aurinia (AUPH), 48% surge in interest

Pipeline and key clinical candidates for these companies:

Crinetics Pharmaceuticals is focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel therapeutics for rare endocrine diseases and endocrine-related tumors. Paltusotine, an investigational, oral somatostatin receptor type 2 agonist, is in Phase 3 clinical development for acromegaly and Phase 2 clinical development for carcinoid syndrome associated with neuroendocrine tumors. Crinetics has demonstrated pharmacologic proof-of-concept in Phase 1 clinical studies for CRN04777, an investigational, oral somatostatin receptor type 5 agonist in development for congenital hyperinsulinism, and for CRN04894, an investigational, oral ACTH antagonist in development for the treatment of Cushing’s disease, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and other diseases of excess ACTH. 

Ideaya is a synthetic lethality focused precision medicine oncology company committed to the discovery and development of targeted therapeutics for patient populations selected using molecular diagnostics. Ideaya says it is applying its research and drug discovery capabilities to synthetic lethality, which "represents an emerging class of precision medicine targets."

Applied Therapeutics is developing a pipeline of novel drug candidates against validated molecular targets in indications of high unmet medical need. The company’s lead drug candidate, AT-007, is a novel central nervous system penetrant Aldose Reductase Inhibitor for the treatment of CNS rare metabolic diseases, including Galactosemia, SORD Deficiency, and PMM2-CDG. The company is also developing AT-001, a novel potent ARI, for the treatment of Diabetic Cardiomyopathy, or DbCM, a fatal fibrosis of the heart.

Aurinia Pharmaceuticals is focused on delivering therapies to treat targeted patient populations that are impacted by serious diseases with a high unmet medical need. In January 2021, the company introduced Lupkynis, which it notes is the first FDA-approved oral therapy dedicated for the treatment of adult patients with active lupus nephritis.

Recent news on these stocks:

April 25

Baird lowered the firm’s price target on Applied Therapeutics to $14 from $18 and kept an Outperform rating on the shares. The analyst said the separation between treatment and placebo over time on the primary, originally designed primary endpoint and multiple important subgroups and secondaries could set up an interesting registrational pathway at FDA.

April 24

Piper Sandler initiated coverage of Crinetics Pharmaceuticals with an Overweight rating and $56 price target. The analyst believes disease acromegaly could be a potential blockbuster market opportunity for the company. Upcoming pivotal trials of PATHFNDR in acromegaly carry low biological, regulatory and clinical risk, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm says acromegaly represents a large market opportunity with potential peak sales of over $2B.

Ideaya Biosciences announced that it intended to offer and sell up to $150M of shares of its common stock in an underwritten public offering. J.P. Morgan, Jefferies and Citigroup are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.

MKT Capital, a significant shareholder of Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, which together with its affiliates beneficially owns approximately 4.2% of Aurinia’s outstanding shares, issued a letter to the company’s shareholders announcing its intention to withhold support for three directors at 2023 Annual Meeting. The letter partially reads, "We initially invested in Aurinia in 2019 because we believed the drug LUPKYNIS had the potential to become a great commercial success as an oral treatment option for advanced lupus nephritis. Unfortunately, since the drug’s commercialization three years ago, the Company has been unable to broaden its distribution or grow sales under Chairman Dr. George Milne and Chief Executive Officer Peter Greenleaf’s leadership. As a result, LUPKYNIS is being used for the treatment needs of 1,500 patients three years in, or roughly less than 1% of the total 135,000 patient addressable market in the U.S. alone. As a long-term shareholder of Aurinia, we have spent a considerable amount of time reviewing the Company’s corporate governance, executive compensation practices and capital allocation decisions and have attempted to engage meaningfully with management to better understand its overall strategy. Our diligence over the past several years has led us to the following conclusion: a reconstituted Board of Directors should commence a strategic review process immediately to explore a sale of the entire business, which we believe could attract a well-capitalized strategic acquirer or private equity buyer and yield up to $28 per share, or more than a 192% premium for shareholders. We are deeply troubled by the Board’s decisions, especially as it relates to executive compensation, which we believe illustrate that several incumbent directors are either unable or unwilling to advance shareholders’ best interests or embrace and act on shareholder feedback… we intend to WITHHOLD support for three current directors at the 2023 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders scheduled for May 17, 2023: Chairman Dr. George Milne, CEO Peter Greenleaf and Compensation Committee Chair Joseph Hagan. In our view, these incumbents have perpetuated a culture of failure and self-enrichment at the expense of shareholders and must be held accountable."

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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

Published first on TheFly

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