One huge mover on the market today has been the Opthea Ltd (ASX: OPT) share price.
In morning trade the developer of novel biologic therapies for the treatment of eye diseases has seen its shares rise a whopping 38% to $1.12 after emerging from their trading halt.
The reason for today's gain is the announcement of positive results from the Phase 1/2A clinical trial of its novel therapy, OPT-302, for wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD).
The study in the United States was run under an Investigational New Drug program with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and met its primary safety endpoint with OPT-302 well tolerated at all dose levels either alone or in combination with Lucentis.
CEO Dr Megan Baldwin was delighted with the results and believes that the data warrants the company expanding its clinical development program further.
Management plans to progress OPT-302 as a novel combination therapy for the treatment of wet AMD as well as other eye diseases, including diabetic macular edema.
Should you invest?
It's not hard to see why investors have got excited by these results. Sales of Lucentis were worth over US$3.6 billion to Roche and Novartis in 2016.
Furthermore, another comparable drug EYLEA generated sales in excess of US$5.4 billion in 2016 for Regeneron and Bayer. Clearly this is an extremely lucrative market for Opthea to operate in.
Another big positive in my opinion is the successful $42 million placement of shares. This was done at a premium to its last close price and means the company is now well funded to expand the clinical development of the drug.
Whilst these trials have been very positive, there is still a long road ahead for the company and OPT-302. For this reason I would suggest investors keep Opthea on their watch list for the time being.
In the meantime I would suggest investors look at making an investment in healthcare shares such as Mayne Pharma Group Ltd (ASX: MYX) and CSL Limited (ASX: CSL) instead.
