Antigenics’ Oncophage Data Boosts Shares

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 21, 10:33AM EDT

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Antigenics (AGEN-NASDAQ) saw its shares pop more than 20% as it released data in apress release regarding its Oncophage trials. The company’s follow-up ‘end of study’ data on Phase III therapeutic cancer cvaccines showed that in a substantial subset of patients at intermediate risk for disease recurrence, Oncophage demonstrated a clinically significant improvement in recurrence-free survival of approximately 45 percent; and for intermediate-risk patients there was a trend towards improved overall survival, the study’s secondary endpoint.

This data was presented at the American Urological Association and this may be the only such treatments approved for these patients. This data may be new observations, but the cut off date was back in January of 2006. Since the cut off date the survival rates have been better and the recurrence rates lower in Oncophage versus the observation arm. Adverse events reported during the trial were generally mild and expected. The more frequently reported adverse events were mainly constitutional in nature or related to the actual injection.

This just goes to show that even if data from other companies was leaking out last week, investors will still follow and still chase certain untreated cancers for their speculative portfolios. AGEN shares are up more than 25% at $3.37 on three-times normal trading volume.

Jon C. Ogg
May 21, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.