Continuing our thematic and timely focus on microcap biotechnology, we want to highlight two companies that are presenting today – the last day – of Cowen’s Health Care Conference in Boston. We understand that by end of day, over 300 public and private companies will have presented. Every public company routinely posts a webcast or slides on its website after it presents. We encourage you to review the ones that interest you and get a glimpse at what institutions have been seeing this week.
Two companies to consider today are: Celyad (NASDAQ: CYAD) and PhaseRx (NASDAQ: PZRX). Both are developing treatments for life threatening diseases and will be getting some welcome exposure today at the Cowen conference.
Celyad is developing therapies based on stem-cell research to treat cardiovascular diseases and cancer. The company’s technologies are in clinical trials, and, as part of its medical devices initiative, it has also has created an intra-myocardial injection catheter called C-Cathez™, designed to reduce the risk of myocardial perforation and increase needle stability. C-Cathez is approved for sale worldwide for clinical use and outside the US for commercial use.
The ordinary shares of this Belgian company have been listed on Euronext since 2013, and the American Depositary Shares began trading on NASDAQ in June 2015. The stock has rallied sharply since Election Day as the company has been reporting steady progress in clinical patient registration, but it’s still trading at only one-third of its IPO price for a market cap of $210 million.
Dr. Christian Homsy, CEO of Celyad, will be presenting at the Cowen conference today at 9:20 am ET.
PhaseRx is developing therapies to treat children with life-threatening inherited diseases. The science involves the replacement of missing or defective enzymes inside cells, and the company’s immediate target is liver disease.
The company went public in May 2016 at $5.00 per share and hasn’t seen that level since a month after the IPO. Shares spiked after Thanksgiving on the news that its lead pipeline candidate received Orphan Drug status from the FDA to treat ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency (OTCD), a urea cycle disorder in the liver. The urea cycle critically converts the body’s waste nitrogen in the blood into urea, which is then normally excreted safely in urine. Disorders in the urea cycle lead to accumulation of nitrogen in the blood in the form of ammonia, which is highly toxic and can lead to brain damage and death.
Shares have given up most of the Orphan Drug news gains and have settled at about $1.50 for a market cap of just $19 million. Dr. Robert Overell, PhaseRx’s CEO, will be presenting at the Cowen conference today at 11:20 am ET.
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