Imugene has three programs underway in the fight against cancer. Each have been proven to be safe and low in toxicity. At the pre clinical and now post clinical level signs of efficacy have been exhibited. The founders of these immunotherapy regimes are pleased with their existing progress and confident of being in a position to save many lives in the near term. Whilst each drug has been trialled on their own, Imugene is now moving quickly to combine their drugs with existing pharmaceuticals, with a view to achieving positive results in both early and late stage cancer patients, over and above the results found in the existing standard of care (SOC), chemotherapy. If successful in these gazetted Phase 2 trials Imugene believes they shall be in a position to take these combination drugs into registration trials and in due course manufacture them at a fraction of the cost of current cancer treatments.
Her Vaxx is the Imugene drug that has been in post clinical trials for the longest, and as such we are now only weeks away from realising the Overall Survival Rates of the trial patients. Combination trials between Her Vaxx and Merck's Keytruda and Merck Germany and Pfiizer's Avelumab are now commencing. Given the broad reach of both Keytruda and Avelumab in terms of existing sales, if Her Vaxx can in any way enhance the safety and efficacy of their drugs, Big Pharma are sure to be pushing the Imugene door down to buy and produce the combination therapy.
PD1 Vaxx is a B cell drug has been trialled successfully in lung cancer patients both in Australia and the USA, wherein many trial patients realised a stabilisation of their cancer having been dosed with the drug. In fact one patient even had their cancer disappear altogether. Before long the results of these trials filtered back to Roche in the US and they decided to partner up with Imugene. Roche an Imugene plan to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Imugene’s PD1-Vaxx, a B-cell activating immunotherapy, in combination with atezolizumab, an immune checkpoint inhibitor targeting PD-L1.
With their B cell trials progressing nicely Imugene did not let the grass grow under their feet. They quickly moved in combination with the FDA in the USA to commence trials of their oncolytic viral therapies, CF33 Check Vaxx and the parental virus, that being Vaxinia. So what is this Oncolytic virus platform all about? Let's check in with Dr Ben Miles to find out:
CF33 Check Vaxx is already proving to be safe when treating triple negative patients in the US, and the founder Yuman Fong is buoyed by early signs of efficacy in the trial of CF33 Check Vacc.Let's take a closer look at CHECKVacc in this video presentation from Imugene:
So if Imugene have a B cell platform in existing trials, and an oncolytic virus platform already in trial, what's their third platform all about?
Well put simply it's all about targeting cancer cells and chasing after the holy grail of cancer treatment, solid tumours.
Watch this video with special interviews with Leslie Chong CEO of Imugene and the inventors of CD19 Oncolytics Yuman Fong and Saul Priceman from City of Hope Cancer Center in LA to find out more about this revolutionary therapy:
Imugene have not been resting on their laurels when it comes to this their third and perhaps most promising platform, given the size of the potential solid tumour market. They have sought to combine with Celularity and Eureka Therapeutics in the US to further develop their platform, in search of cost effective off the shelf cancer treatments that could potentially help millions of cancer patients worldwide.
At Imugene it's not about one type of rare cancer, or indeed a specific cancer line. It's all about treating multiple cancer lines including but not limited to breast, lung, pancreatic, gastric and lymphoma's. Imugene is well on the way to treating both early and late stage cancer patients across their three platforms, with trials now treating up to 100 patients at a time in a number of the world's leading universities and hospitals, including the City Of Hope and Mayo clinics in the USA.
So from an investment point of view why is the stock trading in cents as opposed to dollars? Having now watched these videos and digested what Imugene have in their pipeline, that's a bloody good question. The answer may well be found in the markets inability to themselves digest the length and breadth of Imugene's existing Intellectual Property. Though soon the market is going to have to wake up to the fact all Imugene's trials and the ensuing data are coming to a head. And despite the fact IMU is only listed in little ole' Australia, the results shall speak for themselves. Phase 1 and phase 2 trial results have already started resonating with Big Pharmaceutical companies, as outlined above. Leading fund managers including Vanguard International have sought to continue increasing their holding in IMU. Whilst all the leading shareholders are still on board the IMU train. None have chosen to leave this journey as the light at the end of the tunnel fast approaches. For when a company has multiple products in their pipeline the risk of one or two failing is mitigated somewhat as there are still multiple shots on goal as it were. This is appealing for investors who seek to reduce their exposure to companies with only one product or treatment arm.
We are constantly reminded of the lack of revenue when it comes to IMU. But seriously, what a futile argument given the foundations already laid by Imugene's innovators and staff. When an individual purchases a unit or apartment "off the plan", they factor the rental yield in two or three years time when discussing the investment with their bank or financier. Yet in the IMU scenario the market appears blissfully unaware of the estimated revenue to be garnered from Imugene's ensuing product suite. Just for the record we are talking of billions, and with current Biotech price to earnings ratio's of 18.9 on average over the past three years in the US, that equates to whole lot of market cap for IMU in the near term. Yet unlike Australia, the US isn't perturbed by a lack ofd revenue. They can see promise when its staring them in the face. One only has to look at Imugene's strategic alliance partner Celularity as an example, up 21.7% in the past seven days to $10.84 US. Celularity has a net income of -$62 million dollars. Why if it was trading in Australia it too may well be trading at around the 17 cent mark. It's really quite astounding the disconnect between our local market and the intrinsic value of Imugene's existing Intellectual property. But don't get me started. When your market depends on such low volumes, much of which is either shorted or pushed around by day traders, as opposed to large cap funds and investors, what hope do you have of realising an appropriate stock valuation.
Please watch these visual presentations closely if you are interested in all or simply a part of Imugene's technology. It does promise to assist those diagnosed with cancer immeasurably in the coming years. We have already witnessed the positive outcomes experienced by patients who had failed on other treatment programs and were ostensibly on deaths door when they came to Imugene. Imugene is an ethical investment that is soon to become one of the worlds leading R&D companies in the field of cancer research. Whilst it is just a matter of time before their products are taken up by Big Pharma companies who have wisely made the commercial decision to combine and align themselves with Imugene.
Best of luck to all LTH's - DYOR
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