US Conference20 Nov 2019 07:31
I gather Reneuron was presenting at a US healthcare conference :
Our key takeaways are summarised below:
Key Points
Cell therapy is an attractive market for treating eye disease. You are born with all the photoreceptors you will ever have, so if you lose any due to injury or disease then you lose vision. ReNeuron's hRPC cells create new photoreceptors that integrate into the retina offering an attractive therapeutic option for treating retinitis pigmentosa (RP).
Larger potential patient pool than gene editing products. ReNeuron's hRPC cells replace the lost retinal cells that result in vision loss and are thus agnostic to the underlying genetic cause of the loss of vision, unlike gene editing products.
Cryopreserved cells should allow for easier commercialisation. The development of cryopreserved cells instead of using fresh cells has increased the shelf-life of the product from hours to months and therefore provides easier storage and thus commercialisation.
The FDA looks for an improvement of approximately 10 letters. The Phase II RP data so far has shown an improvement of between 10-20 letters so far in the patient's treatment eye. We summarise the detailed data from AAO below.
CTX stroke programme still expected to readout in 1H21. The Phase IIb trial is a double-blinded trial with patient recruitment ongoing.
Exosomes a potentially interesting drug-delivery vehicle across the blood-brain barrier.
Partnering strategy. Looking to partner hRPC in Japan. For ReNeuron's Exosome technology, the near-term plan is to secure research partnerships to build on current scientific understanding and identify potential new applications.
12 month RPE data due in 1H20. ReNeuron discussed in detail clinical data recently presented at the American Academy of Ophthalmology Annual Meeting (AAO) in San Francisco. Results from the ongoing Phase I/IIa study show dramatic gains in visual acuity from the first three patients treated in the Phase IIa efficacy segment of the study, with an average +28.7 letter gain (range +22 to +38) after 6 months. For the next set of evaluable patients (with better residual retinal activity and acuity at baseline), no meaningful improvement was observed after 2 months (average +3 letters), but appeared to show more of a benefit after 3 months (average +8 letters). Excluding the two subjects with injection-related vision loss, the average improvement was +17.8 letters for all six evaluable patients after 3 months.
Value being generated by RP programme is not being valued correctly. We believe the retinal data thus far fully support further clinical development of hRPCs, and ReNeuron's EV of approximately £16m is far too low and fails to reflect adequately the value being generated by the programme. Reiterate Buy.
It might explain Monday's rally I guess.
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