Capricor Therapeutics price target raised to $39 from $25 at Ladenburg

Ladenburg raised the firm’s price target on Capricor Therapeutics to $39 from $25 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares after the company announced plans to submit a rolling BLA for full approval of deramiocel in DMD based on existing data from the HOPE-2 trial and the HOPE-2 open-label extension trial, as well as natural history data provided by academic institutions, without unblinding the HOPE-3 Cohort A readout due later this year. The firm is “impressed” that Capricor chose to “laser-focus on one of the most important symptoms” of DMD, namely cardiomyopathy, and contends that “rather than going after a broad DMD indication, CAPR seems to play safe and try to win on the label that has the highest probability of success.”