Health and Healthcare

Why Infinity Pharmaceuticals Shares Are Surging

Chris Lange

Published: October 12, 2017 10:45 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 7:15 am

Infinity Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: INFI) saw its shares almost double early on Thursday after the company announced that an abstract from its ongoing clinical trial of IPI-549 had been selected as a late-breaking presentation at the 2017 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting. The presentation will take place in National Harbor, Maryland, on November 10 to 12.

Additionally, a clinical trials in progress poster will also be presented on the Phase 1/1b clinical study that is ongoing to explore the safety and activity of IPI-549, both as a monotherapy and in combination with Opdivo (nivolumab) in patients with advanced solid tumors. IPI-549 is believed to be the only PI3K-gamma inhibitor in clinical development.

The four-part study includes monotherapy and combination dose-escalation components, along with monotherapy expansion and combination expansion components. Patient enrollment is complete in monotherapy dose-escalation, and monotherapy expansion is ongoing. Combination dose-escalation is also ongoing, and combination expansion is expected to begin in the second half of 2017.

The combination expansion component includes multiple cohorts designed to evaluate IPI-549 in patients with specific types of cancer, including patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), melanoma and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). This combination expansion will also include a cohort of patients with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC).

It’s worth pointing out that NSCLC, melanoma, HNSCC and TNBC account for more than 22% of all new cancer cases in the United States.

Excluding Thursday’s move, Infinity Pharma has outperformed the U.S. broad markets, with the stock up about 24% year to date. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock is up only about 14%.

Shares of Infinity Pharma were last seen up over 80% at $3.05, with a consensus analyst price target of $1.50 and a 52-week range of $0.84 to $3.84.