Heat Biologics Inc (NASDAQ:HTBX) shares surged 29.72% to $3.23 and an additional 8.36% to $3.50 in after-hours trading on Monday. The company has a market cap of $100.57 million at 23.88 million shares outstanding. Share prices have been trading in a 52-week range of $0.40 to $4.71 so the stock is already moving in on the highs.
Heat Biologics Inc is a development-stage company focused on developing allogeneic, off-the-shelf cellular therapeutic vaccines to combat a range of cancers. It is an immuno-oncology company, which focuses on T cell-stimulating platform technologies, such as Immune Pan-Antigen Cytotoxic Therapy or ImPACT and Combination Pan-Antigen Cytotoxic Therapy or ComPACT.
Using its ImPACT platform technology, the Company has developed HS-410 as a product candidate to treat non-muscle invasive bladder cancer and HS-110which is intended for use in combination with an anti-PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor, as a potential treatment for patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Using its ComPACT platform technology, it has developed HS-120 as a potential treatment for non-small cell lung cancer. Heat Biologics Inc is conducting a Phase II trial of HS-410 in patients with NMIBC, and a Phase Ib trial of HS-110 in combination with nivolumab.
Shares of Heat Biologics Inc were already enjoying strong momentum in last week’s shortened trading session, closing at $2.49 on over 20 million shares traded by the close. Earlier this month, the company announced that it will be reporting topline results from the Phase Ib study evaluating HS-110, in combination with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s anti-PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor, nivolumab for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer in a Mini Oral Session, at the International Society for the Study of Lung Cancer Annual Meeting, in Vienna, Austria, on December 6th. The results will be presented by study principal investigator, Daniel Morgensztern, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Thoracic Oncology, Washington University School of Medicine.
On its daily time frame, it can be seen that Heat Biologics Inc share prices broke out of consolidation earlier this month and proceeded to establish a strong bullish run. A bit of a pullback may be needed to sustain this climb and draw more buyers to the mix but volume remains sufficiently high to keep losses in check. Stronger gains could push it up to the $4.00 to $4.50 levels or higher, depending on how the topline results turn out. By the looks of it, investors and company management are optimistic about the study.
In its earlier presentation of ComPACT clinical trial results at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Annual Meeting, researchers concluded that ComPACT synergizes well with checkpoint inhibitors, which could provide an effective cancer treatment approach in humans, leading investors to believe that their upcoming presentation would yield similar conclusions.
These data provide a compelling mechanistic rationale for combinations between ComPACT vaccines and PD-1/L1 blockade,” said Taylor Schreiber, M.D., Ph.D., Heat Biologics Inc Chief Scientific Officer and study author. “The combination significantly increased the frequency of tumor-antigen specific CD8+ T cells, and increased the fraction of those cells that are most likely to become long-lived memory cells capable of providing durable tumor immunity.”
The upcoming presentation is called “Viagenpumatucel-L Bolsters Response to Nivolumab Therapy in Advanced Lung Adenocarcinoma: Preliminary Data from the DURGA Trial” with this abstract.
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