The Prescient Therapeutics Ltd (ASX: PTX) share price is gaining ground in afternoon trade today and is currently changing hands at 24.5 cents apiece.
The biotechnology company's shares are on the move after Prescient announced pre-clinical data readouts regarding its lead drug candidate.
Read on for more details.
What was announced?
Prescient advised it will be presenting pre-clinical data from a recent study on its OmniCAR candidate at the Cell & Gene Meeting on the Mesa in California. The event started yesterday and runs until 14 October.
According to the company, OmniCAR allows controllable T-cell activity and multi-antigen targeting with a single cell product.
Both of these functions are critical in immune response in humans to protect against illness. The company is seeking a remedial breakthrough with this route to treat various types of cancer.
The company said the Cell & Gene Meeting brings together top executives and decision-makers across various therapies, including cell therapy.
From the pre-clinical readouts, Prescient highlights that OmniCAR has presented capacity to "deliver next-generation cell therapies that are controllable and able to target multiple cancer antigens".
This is an advantage over the current limitations that CAR-T therapy – the platform on which OmniCAR works – presents in the modern clinical setting.
That's because CAR-T therapy involves growing living cells that continue to grow. These are then administered to patients which makes outcomes less predictable and controllable.
What else did the company say?
Other key takeouts from the data include that OmniCAR demonstrated a curious phenomenon where it can be "redirected towards a different antigen" by tweaking the formulation. When this happened, it exhibited a dose-response to cancer-killing activity.
For reference, a dose-response measures the relationship between the amount of drug given and the level of response to it. Usually, a stronger relationship indicates a greater efficacy.
Aside from this, Prescient's other lead drug candidates, PTX-100 and PTX-200, are each progressing through clinical trials.
Both compounds also aim to treat and prevent the onset of cancer.
Investors have bought on the news today and are pushing the Prescient Therapeutics share price 11% higher from the open.
This extends a 9% rally the company's shares have been on this past week.
Prescient Therapeutics share price snapshot
The Prescient Therapeutics share price has delivered an outsized return of 266% this year to date.
This brings its gain over the past 12 months to 271%, well ahead of the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO)'s climb of about 20% in that time.
At the time of writing, Prescient has a market capitalisation of $157 million.
