The share price of Medgenics Ltd. (AIM:MEDG; AMEX: MDGN) soared 28% on Wall Street on Monday, after CEO Dr Andrew Pearlman told website "CorporateProfile.com", "We think we are in front of some very important developments in the next months," referring to the company's novel protein delivery system.
The company has applied to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin a Phase IIb clinical trial for its anemia biopump treatment for patients with kidney failure. The Phase I/II clinical trial found that patients go for 6-12 months without injections and without being anemic. The company is also due to receive approval for three clinical trials in Israel for hepatitis and anaemia.
Medgenics' biopump utilizes a tiny sliver of the patient's tissue modified to carry the gene to enable it to continuously produce the required protein to treat the condition. "And it actually works. It's in patients already for three years and it's working very well," said Pearlman.
Medgenics is developing three applications of the technology for anaemia, hepatitis-C and haemophilia. According to CorporateProfile.com, the company is targeting the protein therapy market, which is worth $90 billion.
Last week, analyst Ray Dirks effused on CorporateProfile.com, "Medgenics has what I believe to be the most disruptive biotechnology of the last 20 years. This company is poised to own the 90 billion plus protein therapy market. We are talking about an enormous indication. Nomura calls this one of the top ten biotech companies to watch over the next five years." He adds that "it has a management team that is arguably for top to bottom the best I have ever seen."
Dirks added, "The most compelling thing about this story is that this isn’t just a treatment for only anemia; it is a platform that can be used on ALL protein therapies."
Dirks also compared Medgenics with two other Israeli companies: Protalix Biotherapeutics Inc. (AMEX:PLX; TASE: PLX), which has a platform technology at about the same stage of clinical development as that of Medgenics, but is only for an indication of 25,000 patients, and has a $520 million market cap; and Prolor Biotech Inc. (AMEX: PBTH; TASE: PBTH), which has a treatment which only increases the half lives of protein therapies, and has a market cap of $300 million.
Medgenics' share price rose 11.5% on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) today to ₤2.42, and opens at $4.40 on the American Stock Exchange, giving a market cap of $42 million.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 8, 2012
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2012