Applied Genetic price target lowered to $15 from $20 at Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo analyst Jim lowered his price target for Applied Genetic to $15 from $20 following “disappointing” Phase 1/2 data for the XLRS gene therapy program. Overall, the analyst believes the results were expected, based on earlier updates, and should not be generalized to ongoing retinal gene therapy programs for XLRP and ACHM-B3 and ACHM-A3, where he continues to see greater likelihood of success in 2019. Birchenough reiterates an Outperform rating on the shares.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Cigna initiated at Morgan Stanley
Cigna resumed with an Overweight at Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley analyst Zack Sopcak resumed coverage of Cigna with an Overweight rating and $304 price target, stating that he views the Express Scripts deal as less of a vertical integration play and more of a “basic building block for future transformative growth.” The risks to Express Scripts execution are more headline than operational, contends Sopcak, who projects Cigna earnings above $21 in 2021, which he notes is above management’s stated target.
Orchard Therapeutics to build-out gene therapy facility in California
Orchard Therapeutics announced that it has signed a long-term lease agreement to build-out a gene therapy manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. The new 150,000-square-foot facility increases Orchard’s California footprint and adds to the Foster City and Menlo Park, California sites, which oversee the ongoing development and validation of the manufacture of Orchard’s ex vivo gene therapy product candidates. Once operational, the new site will provide significant additional CGMP manufacturing capacity for both lentiviral vector and cryopreserved cell therapy products, enhancing Orchard’s ability to manufacture and deliver gene-corrected hematopoetic stem cells for a wide range of diseases on a global basis. In addition to this expanded capacity, Orchard also plans to continue its close collaborations with the company’s contract manufacturing partners. The build-out of Orchard’s new manufacturing facility is expected to begin in 2019, and the company expects to hire more than 100 full-time employees over the next few years to support in-house manufacturing efforts.
Neurocrine price target lowered to $105 from $140 at Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer analyst Jay Olson lowered his price target for Neurocrine to $105 from $140 after T-Force-GOLD missed the primary endpoint, sending the shares down on the loss of this important opportunity in Tourette syndrome. The analyst reiterates an Outperform rating on the shares.
Neurocrine price target lowered to $84 from $110 at Leerink
Leerink analyst Marc Goodman lowered his price target for Neurocrine to $84 from $110, while reiterating a Market Perform rating on the shares. In Tourette syndrome, the analyst removed his sales forecasts due to the negative readout of T-Force GOLD and in Tardive dyskinesia, he adjusted his peak sales estimates from about $2.5B to $2.0B.
Aimmune current range an attractive entry point, says Cantor Fitzgerald
Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Charles Duncan sees the current Aimmune Therapeutics trading range as an attractive entry point. He reiterates an Overweight rating on the shares with a $64 price target after attending the company’s analyst day.
XBiotech announces post-hoc analysis for bermekimab study published
XBiotech announced the publication of findings on key biomarker analysis of colorectal cancer patients treated with bermekimab in its European Phase III study. The manuscript has been published online in the journal OncoImmunology. The findings report that patients with relatively low levels of IL-1ra or IL-6 were more likely to respond to bermekimab therapy and achieve the study’s primary endpoint. The study’s primary endpoint measured a combination of physical symptoms-pain, fatigue, anorexia and muscle wasting-which tend to worsen with advanced cancer, to assess whether these symptoms stabilized or improved with treatment. Patients that achieved the primary endpoint in the Phase III study had one-fifth as many serious adverse events, were twice as likely to have no tumor growth, improved significantly with all life quality measures, and had almost three-fold increase in survival compared to failures. Results from analysis found that for patients with relatively low IL-1ra levels at the start, 41% of those treated with bermekimab achieved the primary endpoint, compared to only 33% of patients for the entire bermekimab treatment group. However, in the publication it is reported that for those with relatively low pretreatment levels of both IL-1ra and IL-6, 46% of patients in the bermekimab group versus only 17% in placebo achieved the primary endpoint. About 28% of patients in the study met the criteria of low IL-1ra and low IL-6.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)