Maybe it’s not just Channel 7 turning heads toward Imugene at...

Maybe it’s not just Channel 7 turning heads toward Imugene at present

It may not just be the public who turn their attention toward Imugene this week. There are many reasons Big Pharma may switch express an interest Imugene at present. Team Imugene may not only be busy fielding emails from prospective bile duct patient oncologists, Big Pharma may be seeking them out as well. This could be due to a number of reasons,

Firstly, Big Pharma may need to bolster their dwindling immunotherapy pipelines, (I.e., Merck with Keytruda running out of patent life in 2028.)

Secondly, there may be interest due to Imugene’s allogeneic therapy, Azer cel. Azer cel was designed by Precision Biosciences using their innovative Arcus technology, wherein a single protein is expressed from a single gene. There’s no need to deliver multiple parts. This enables efficient multiplexing of edits, as opposed to the autologous CAR T treatment arms it promises to compete with, many of whom have recently placed under scrutiny by the FDA. (See @davybabyk's post above for more.)

Then thirdly, forthcoming Vaxinia results are clearly another reason for Big Pharma heads to turn in Imugene’s direction. With the recent JP Morgan Conference and news stories beginning to spread the word of Imugene’s Vaxinia and its successful trial results, Big Pharma may well express an interest sooner rather than later.

But perhaps the reason Big Pharma may collectively begin to focus on Imugene is due to none of the above reasons, but rather Imugene’s ability to produce drugs at a fraction of the cost of Big Pharma drugs, i.e., Big Pharma monoclonal antibodies (MAB’s) such as Keytruda, Opdivo and Tercentriq.

Imugene’s website makes a point of noting how relatively inexpensive their immunotherapies are when compared to monoclonal antibodies (MAB’s) and traditional immunotherapies. It states that due to the lower cost of production, B-cell immunotherapies are much cheaper to manufacture than MAB drugs. Yuman Fong has suggested he chose Vaxinia not simply based upon its efficacy, but due to the fact it could potentially scale at cost, in other words be produced on mass to reach a large number of patients. Hence his underlying desire to attain the optimal biological dose rate for the drug, to ensure dosage levels are appropriate.

This week once again Big Pharma were being hammered from pillar to post over the cost of their drugs. As an example in Senate hearings with three leading Big Pharma CEO’s Rob Davis of Merck was questioned by Senator Bernie Sanders as to why the list price of Keytruda was $191,000 in the U.S. compared to $112,000 in Canada and $44,000 in Japan. Davis said in reply it was all about improved access in the U.S. “We have 39 indications of Keytruda across17 tumor types in the United States. If you look across Europe, it’s in the 20s," he said. But the lawmakers failed to let up. A general comeback from Big Pharma was that governments needed to cut out the middleman, I.e., pharmacies, and the rebates applicable to them. fiercepharma.com noted this week that despite the often partisan tone of Thursday's hearing, a Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll from July of last year showed that there is widespread support for more government regulation of drug prices, with 82% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans saying that the government should play a greater role.

Senator Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, pointed out that J&J spent more on stock buybacks and shareholder dividends ($17 billion) than it did on R&D ($14 billion) in 2022.

Regulators have been cracking down on Big Pharma for some time now. The pressure is mounting. Big Pharma need to start showing the Democrats and Republicans the money, as it were. Politicians in the US are chasing scalps to take home to their cash strapped constituents who cannot afford Big Pharma’s excessive drug prices. The politicians suggest middlemen are not the problem, its the drugmakers themselves. They stated on Thursday that, “Drugmakers’ high prices are the whole reason that we have a middlemen problem. It’s because we have exceedingly high prices at the outset that there’s an attractive market for middlemen to enter.”

Either way if Imugene can produce vaccines, oncolytic viruses and allogeneic therapies at a fraction of Big Pharma’s cost to produce them, they may well receive the support of not only prospective Big Pharma suitors, but lawmakers and regulators as well. It may not just be the FDA who are keen to fast track Imugene’s drugs to market.

DYOR Seek investment advice as and when required Opinions only