The market may be falling for a fourth day in a row, but that hasn't stopped a couple of ASX healthcare shares from charging higher today.
Here's what is getting investors excited about them on Wednesday:
Race Oncology Ltd (ASX: RAC)
The Race Oncology share price was up as much as 14% to 99 cents before easing back. The ASX healthcare share is now up 3% at 89 cents.
This has been driven by news that bisantrene shows potent anti-cancer activity when screened on a diverse panel of blood and solid organ tumour cells. Bisantrene, which is the company's lead asset, is a small-molecule anthracene chemotherapeutic.
According to the release, when used at low drug concentrations, bisantrene improved the cancer cell-killing efficacy of the widely used anti-cancer drug doxorubicin. The data further supports the potential clinical use of bisantrene in combination with doxorubicin.
Rhythm Biosciences Ltd (ASX: RHY)
The Rhythm Biosciences share price was up 15% to 34.5 cents in morning trade. It has now given back some of those gains but remains up a decent 8% to 32.5 cents.
The catalyst for this was the release of an update on its cancer diagnostics technology platform expansion program in breast cancer. The ASX healthcare share has previously used its technology to identify four biomarkers that exhibit a strong correlation with specific breast cancer subtypes.
Today's update reveals that preliminary results show that it has identified important biomarker combinations that can distinguish between patients with breast cancer and healthy controls, with an 83% sensitivity and a 90% specificity.
Management believes these encouraging results warrant confirmation in a larger sample set and justify the continuation and advancement of the project.
