The Nyrada Inc (ASX: NYR) share price hit its highest ever price of 37 cents yesterday before settling to 24 cents, which put it up 34.29% for the day.
The soaring gains are welcome news for the biotechnology company which, since listing in January this year, has seen its share price steadily fall.
What did Nyrada announce?
Yesterday morning Nyrada's share price was sent flying as it announced encouraging preclinical results from its cholesterol-lowering drug study.
The company reported that its Nyrada PCSK9 inhibitor demonstrated equivalency to 2 already approved monoclonal antibodies in healthy white blood cells. The results confirmed that the drug had potential to be used with and without statin. It is encouraging news for Nyrada as it seeks to replace expensive ongoing injections for patients with high cholesterol with the first ever oral pill.
Nyrada also announced that sales for current drugs in this field, Amgen Repatha and Rengeneron/Sanofi Praluent were in excess of US$900 million in FY2019, suggesting a potential market size.
The study that used healthy donor white blood cells treated with Nyrada's PCSK9 inhibitor NYX-PCSK9i showed an increase in LDL receptor levels and demonstrated that it was as efficient as the current injectables in the market.
Commenting on the results, CEO James Bonnar stated:
Having a drug candidate that works as well as the two market-leading monoclonal PSCK9 antibodies in a human cell model is a huge achievement. It represents a big step forward in our mission to develop the first-ever small molecule PCSK9 inhibitor to treat high cholesterol and provide a compelling cost-competitive and convenient treatment alternative to Repatha and Praluent.
What does Nyrada do?
Nyrada is a new US biotech located in Delaware, USA. It is a preclinical stage, drug discovery, and development company, specialising in novel small molecule drugs to treat cardiovascular, neurological, and inflammatory diseases. Apart from the drug mentioned above, Nyrada is also researching a drug to treat brain injury, specifically traumatic brain injury and stroke.
Nyrada maintains a solid cash position, with $6.1 million in the bank as of the end of March 2020. Nyrada reports it is also largely unaffected by the impact of COVID-19, although the company is taking precautionary steps to help quarantine its business from any global fallout.
With yesterday's gains, the Nyrada share price now sits at 24 cents per share.
