A bit of a encompassing status of MSB from nabtrade page read switzer
Mesoblast Limited
- Market capitalisation: $443 million
- Share price start 2016: $1.825
- Analysts’ consensus target price (Thomson Reuters): $3.01
Regenerative medicine company Mesoblast has developed a technology platform based on specialised cells called mesenchymal lineage adult stem cells (MLCs): these cells can be sourced from the bone marrow of young healthy adult donors and administered to thousands of patients, without any material immune response.
Mesoblast has several priority “Tier 1” therapy candidates developed from this program in active Phase 3 clinical trials, including Revascor (MPC-150-IM) for chronic heart failure, MPC-06-ID for chronic lower back pain due to disc degeneration and MSC-100-IV for acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD). Important results are expected in all three programs in the current financial year.
The company also has an allogenic stem cell therapy, MPC-300-IV, in a Phase 2 clinical trial for refractory rheumatoid arthritis. In August, Mesoblast reported positive results from the trial, revealing that a single intravenous infusion of MPC-300-IV was well tolerated (that is, safe) and improved the patients’ clinical symptoms, physical function, and disease activity compared to the placebo.
Mesoblast’s stem cells act by both releasing anti-inflammatory factors and by secreting two proteins that act on cells within inflamed joints. The treatment could relieve the pain suffered by the almost one-third of rheumatoid arthritis patients for whom new biologic drugs have failed.
Mesoblast estimates the global market for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis is more than US$15 billion, growing to more than US$18 billion by 2024. About one-third of patients do not respond to currently available treatments, which gives Mesoblast a potentially lucrative addressable market.
Mesoblast’s licencee in Japan, JCR Pharmaceuticals, has received full approval for the first allogeneic cell-based product in Japan based on its MLC technology, TEMCELL, to treat aGVHD in children and adults in Japan. Mesoblast also believes it is well positioned to have the first industrially manufactured allogeneic cell-based product approved in the United States.
Mesoblast’s “Tier 2” therapy candidates include MSC-100-IV for Crohn’s Disease, MPC-25-IC for acute cardiac ischemia, MPC-25-Osteo for spinal fusion and MSC-75-IA for knee osteoarthritis
The company’s stem cell technology is very promising, and all of its therapy candidates are aimed at multi-billion-dollar market opportunities, but Mesoblast is a living example of the risk of biotechnology investing: its shares were $8 five years ago, and it has been downhill ever since. Most recently, in June, Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva Pharmaceutical, which, since a 2010 deal, had been funding Mesoblast’s most important treatment, Revascor, for chronic heart failure, walked away from its commitment to fund the final clinical trials (although Teva still owns 14.6% of Mesoblast.)
But the analysts who follow Mesoblast see plenty of scope for the share price to rise as the data flows from its clinical trials. At the upper extreme, Edison Research values the stock at $3.84 – which would represent a 230% gain from the current price.
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