The case for ImugeneBoutique investment bank
Roth Capital reckons that time will come within the next 12 months, predicting that IMU’s share price will almost triple during this period to 71c (from the current 25c).
Roth doesn’t expect to see any revenue for Imugene up until the end of FY23, but what it does see is potential success in the clinic for many of its drug candidates.
Jonathan Aschoff, senior research analyst at Roth, said he based the 12-month price target on a 6x multiple of a projected operating income of about $1.47 billion.
“We arrive at this valuation by projecting future revenue from CHECKvacc in TNBC, HER-Vaxx in advanced HER2+ gastric cancer, and PD1-Vaxx in NSCLC,” Aschoff said.
“Commercial success outside these financially modelled programs would also serve as potential upside to our valuation,” he added.
Robert LeBoyer, research analyst at
Noble Capital, has a more subdued outlook and reckons the Imugene share price will double over the next 12 months.
According to LeBoyer, the existing drug that Imugene will potentially replace or compete with will have billions of dollars in annual sales.
“Based on the valuations of similar companies developing drugs in these fields of therapy, we believe Imugene has a fair value of about $3 billion or 50c per share,” said LeBoyer.
Market expert
Tim Boreham says that while Imugene’s Phase 2 programs are bubbling along, it has a long way to go, so the issue for investors boils down to valuation.
“With cash of $99.9 million as of June 30 2022, Imugene is well placed to further its trial, notably for its flagship HER-Vaxx program,” Boreham told
*.“The company burnt through $30 million in the 2021-22, which once again shows that drug development involves large licks of cash.
“Imugene could go all the way but given the global interest in immuno-oncology, a partnership for Phase 3 development and ultimate regulatory approval is a likely scenario,” added Boreham.
Imugene’s pipelineTo recap, Imugene is an immuno-oncology company developing a range of immunotherapies that seek to activate the immune system of cancer patients to treat tumours.
The company has a strong pre-clinical and clinical trial pipeline, and its assets boil down to three candidates:
– Multiple immunotherapy B-cell vaccine candidates
– An oncolytic virotherapy (CF33)
– Emerging CAR-T’s for solid tumours (onCARlytics)
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| 1 | B-cell vaccines | HER-Vaxx | Phase 2 trial |
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| 2 | B-cell vaccines | PD1-Vaxx | Phase 1 trial |
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| 3 | onCARlytics | CD-19 CAR-T | Pre-clinical |
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| 4 | Oncolytic virus | Vaxinia (CF33 + hNIS) | Phase 1 trial |
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| 5 | Oncolytic virus | Checkvacc ((CF33 + hNIS + PD-L1) | Phase 1 trial |
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Multiple immunotherapy B-cell vaccine pipelineB-cell immunotherapies generally look at ways to produce a B-cell cancer vaccine that induces the body to produce antibodies against the normal self-proteins such as HER2 or PD-1.
The use of B-cell immunotherapies has advantages over synthetic antibodies, which include reducing the risk of the tumour becoming resistant to the therapy.
B-cell immunotherapies are also much cheaper to manufacture than MAB (monoclonal antibodies) drugs.
Imugene is running multiple studies on this platform, but the two most advanced are the HER-Vaxx and PD1-Vaxx trials.
The Phase 1 Vaxinia (CF33 + hNIS) trialIn June, the Phase 1 Vaxinia clinical trial kicked off off by injecting the virus into the veins of people who have solid tumours, and have had at least two prior types of treatment.
This trial now aims to recruit 100 cancer patients across the US and Australia over a period of two years.
The Phase 1 Checkvacc (CF33 + hNIS + PD-L1) trialEarlier this week, Imugene dosed the first patient in Cohort 3 in the Phase I clinical trial of CheckVacc, which is basically Vaxinia “armed” with anti PD-L1 genes.
The study is recruiting patients with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), which at the moment has no meaningful treatments.
“We expect that the final Phase 1 dose tested will be given to an expanded cohort of 12 patients, and ultimately be selected as the Phase 2 dose,” said Aschoff.
The onCARlytics platform pipelineThe Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells or CAR-T are a type of treatment in which a patient’s T cells (a type of immune system cell) are changed in the laboratory so they will attack cancer cells.
These T cells are taken from a patient’s blood, modified in the lab, and re-injected into the patient.
CAR T cells directed against CD-19 (a B-lymphocyte antigen) work very well against B cell malignancies or liquid (blood) cancers.
Imugene believes the combination immunotherapy (onCARlytics) combined with its CF33 oncolytic virus works more effectively in targeting solid tumours that are otherwise difficult to treat with CAR-T therapy alone.
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