January 3, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
NEW YORK – It’s a new year and investors are ready to look for new opportunities. While 2016 was a bit of a disappointment for biotech stocks, 2017 is looking promising, particularly for Exelixis, Inc. and Tesaro Inc.
Writing in the Motley Fool, analyst Corey Renauer picked these two companies as ones to watch in the coming year.
Shares of Exelixis, Inc. are currently trading at $14.32. Exelixis was one of the best performing stocks of 2016, Renauer said, with growth of about 165 percent. In January 2016, shares of the stock were trading at $5.49. The company saw growth last year through an approval in the U.S. and Europe for its kidney cancer drug Cabometyx. The drug was approved as a second-line treatment, but it is aiming for approval as a first-line therapy in kidney cancer. The company is looking to expand the use of the drug for use in liver cancer patients. If the drug does see an expanded use, that would drive stock prices. Renauer said the drug is expected to gain a “20 percent market share in the second-line setting and a 35 percent share in the third-line setting.”
In a head-to-head comparison with Pfizer ’s Sutent, Renauer reported that Cabometyx shrank tumors in 46 percent of patients in comparison to 18 percent for those treated with Sutent. Additionally, patients treated with Cabometyx saw a 31 percent reduction in the risk of disease progression or death, Renauer said.
Shares of Tesaro are trading at $132.18 this morning. Over the course of 2016, the stock grew 153 percent, Renauer said. Tesaro had been on a roll since early July when the company announced its ovarian cancer treatment, Niraparib, an oral, once-daily PARP inhibitor, met its endpoints of progression-free survival (PFS) in a Phase III trial. Tesaro filed for approval with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a final decision is expected in June 2017. Renauer said the company is looking to expand niraparib’s use in ovarian cancer, as well as prostate cancer. If the drug is expanded for use as a second-line treatment in ovarian cancer, that would turn the drug into a blockbuster, Renauer said. If it’s expanded for use in prostate cancer, he said that would mean the drug could see exponential market growth, Renauer said. The continued successes of niraparib has caused speculation that Tesaro could be a takeover target. Companies that have been rumored to be interested in Tesaro include Gilead , Amgen , Celgene and Pfizer.
