Clarity Pharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX: CU6) shares are catching the eye on Wednesday.
In morning trade, the ASX healthcare stock is up 12% to $5.15.
Why is this ASX healthcare stock rocketing?
Investors have been bidding this clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company's shares higher this morning after it announced a new product.
According to the release, the company has expanded its pipeline with the development of a novel fibroblast activation protein (FAP)-targeted radiopharmaceutical for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
The ASX healthcare stock, which will join the ASX 200 index next week, advised that FAP is expressed on cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs), a particular cell type found in the tumour microenvironment.
It notes that CAFs are found in a broad range of cancers (e.g. breast, colorectal, pancreatic, lung, brain and ovarian cancers), but only minimally in normal tissue, making FAP a promising pan-cancer target for both imaging and treatment of cancers.
Furthermore, CAFs form part of the environment surrounding the cancer cells, and they can promote cancer growth and the spread of the tumour throughout the body.
Targeting the tumour stroma is an alternative way to treat cancer whereby the architecture of the tumour mass is targeted rather than the tumour cells directly.
The product, named SAR-bisFAP, has shown strong tumour targeting, retention and pharmacokinetic data to date in pre-clinical models.
The ASX healthcare stock's executive chair, Dr Alan Taylor, commented:
Our commitment to always putting science first at Clarity has placed us in an enviable position in radiopharmaceuticals globally. This has allowed us, yet again, to create a novel product at the benchtop to overcome the shortcomings of competing radiopharmaceuticals by increasing the uptake and retention of the molecule over time.
Coupled with the use of the perfect pairing of copper isotopes, this facilitates the use of same-day and next-day imaging, addressing the issue of low sensitivity of short half-life products using gallium-68 and fluorine-18, as well as potentially enhancing the therapeutic benefit through increasing the amount and retention of the product at the site of tumours. This is especially the case for FAP-targeted radiopharmaceuticals that offer so much hope as a pan-cancer but suffer the issue of low uptake and retention at the tumour site.
Overall, this is a promising development. However, the company warned that outcomes from human clinical trials may differ from pre-clinical findings and there is no guarantee that these products will become commercially available. But here's hoping they will.
