Immutep Explodes 190% on Positive Breast Cancer Treatment Trial Results

Shares of Australian biotech Immutep were soaring 190% on Thursday after Wall Street learned that the company had reported positive results from a trial of a treatment for metastatic breast cancer.

Data was presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium this week. According to the company’s overall survival data from the Phase 2b study evaluating eftilagimod alpha, its lead product candidate, in combo with chemotherapy, it had performed well compared to the placebo and chemotherapy.

The overall trend in OS in total population was a median survival benefit of plus 2.7 months and in patients under 65 years of age, the benefit was 7.1 months.

“Although the progression free survival data in the efti group did not show a significant improvement versus the comparator arm in AIPAC earlier this year, the OS data in general looks already very interesting and will mature further,” said AIPAC Principal Investigator, Hans Wildiers of University Hospital Leuven in Belgium.

“The OS data in subgroups such as those below age 65 years are highly encouraging and may lead to more effective treatment options for metastatic breast cancer patients.”

Maxim analyst Jason McCarthy raised his stock price target to $8 from $4 on the news.

“The data around overall survival, particularly in pre-defined subgroups, suggests efti is having a meaningful and significant impact,” McCarthy wrote. Maxim has a “buy” rating on the stock.

Immutep CSO and CMO, Dr Frederic Triebel said:“We are very excited to see that efti is boosting the immune system byproviding a statistically significant increase in CD8 T cell numbers,which is correlated with prolonged survivalfor patients. These dataprovideproof-of-concept and support our long-held belief that efti can provide a meaningful benefit to patients in a range of cancer settings by “pushing the gas” on the body’s immune system, representing an important landmark. Through this mechanism, efti is helping a large proportion of patients in the AIPAC study with Her2-HR+metastatic breast cancer which is typically a non-immunogenic cancer and is therefore significantly less responsive to modern immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapies. As such, chemotherapy continues to be the standard of care in many instances and there continues to be alarge unmet medical need. We look forward to reporting final survival data in 2021.”

Immutep CEO ,Marc Voigt said: “AIPAC marks an importantmilestonefor Immutepandbuildsour confidence that efti is beneficial for many cancer patients, including those with metastatic breast cancer. Notably, we have seen a more material OS benefit than PFS benefit in this study;however,we note that this is not unusual for some immunotherapies where it can take time for the body’s immune system to be boosted and provide a therapeutic benefit. We are very encouraged by these first OS results which, subject to ongoing data collection, warrant a registrational perspective and regulatory interactions towards what we hope will be an important new class of medicines.”

Immutep shares have gained 218% YTD.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.