Agenus Inc. (NASDAQ: AGEN), in conjunction with Incyte Corp. (NASDAQ: INCY), announced a global license for the development and commercialization of Agenus’s proprietary Retrocyte Display antibody discovery platform. As a result Agenus stock skyrocketed in Friday’s trading.
Agenus and Incyte will share all costs and profits for the GITR and OX40 antibody programs on a 50:50 basis, with Agenus eligible for potential milestones; TIM-3 and LAG-3 are royalty-bearing programs to be funded by Incyte, with Agenus eligible for potential milestones and royalties. The first clinical trials are expected to begin in 2016.
The alliance between these two companies adds Agenus’s therapeutic antibody capabilities to Incyte’s small molecule discovery expertise. According to the CEO of Incyte, this should significantly expand the landscape of potential immuno-oncology targets for Incyte and strengthen its ability to identify and advance novel therapeutic combinations.
Garo H. Armen, Ph.D., chairman and CEO of Agenus, commented on the alliance:
Our Retrocyte Display technology has produced high quality antibody candidates and offers significant advantages over competing technologies. With Incyte, we believe we have an ideal partner to help define the evolving treatment paradigm of cancer immunotherapies.
Friday morning, shares traded as high as $5.80 — the 52-week high — were still up a whopping 31% at $5.40 in afternoon trading. The average daily volume for Agenus is 515,000 but Friday’s volume blew this number out of the water, recording over 21 million shares moved.
Agenus stock has a consensus analyst price target of $6.75 and a 52-week trading range of $2.27 to $5.80.
Shares of Incyte did not react as positively and were down almost 2% at $71.84. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $81.54 and a 52-week trading range of $40.30 to $80.78.
Agenus has a market cap of roughly $327 million, versus Incyte’s market cap of $12 billion.
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