Health and Healthcare

Organovo Makes Handy Gain on Positive Consumer Response

Chris Lange

Published: November 1, 2016 10:10 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 1:40 am

Organovo Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: ONVO) shares saw a handy gain on Tuesday after the bio-printer announced that it received a strong consumer response from its second tissue service. Specifically, the ExVive Human Kidney Tissue launched in September, which uses Organovo’s 3D bio-printed kidney tissue to study the effects of drug exposure through toxicology panels and transporter studies.

The company already has multiple commercial orders from several customers, including with two global, top 25 pharmaceutical companies.

For some background: Organovo designs and creates functional, three-dimensional human tissues for use in medical research and therapeutic applications. The company develops 3D human tissue models through internal development and in collaboration with pharmaceutical, academic and other partners. Organovo’s 3D human tissues have the potential to accelerate the drug discovery process, enabling treatments to be developed faster and at lower cost.

Currently, Organovo’s ExVive Human Liver and Kidney Tissues are used in toxicology and other preclinical drug testing. The company also actively conducts early research on specific tissues for therapeutic use in direct surgical applications.

Dr. Caroline Lee, senior director, Ardea Biosciences (wholly-owned subsidiary of AstraZeneca), commented:

Nephrotoxicity is a key concern in drug development and the proximal tubule is the primary site of renal toxicity. Specifically, transporters in the proximal tubule play a crucial role in the distribution and accumulation of drugs in the kidney.  The ExVive Human Kidney Tissue provides an ideal means to study the impact of renal transporters on the disposition of drugs because it closely resembles native human kidney proximal tubule, with its polarized renal epithelial cells and tubulointerstitial interface and in particular its native expression level of transporters enabling formation of the transport network.

Excluding Tuesday’s move, Organovo is flat year to date. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock is actually down 19%.

Shares of Organovo were trading up more than 5% at $2.62 Tuesday, with a consensus analyst price target of $4.75 and a 52-week trading range of $1.60 to $4.99.