Shire's Discontinuation of BAX 335 Program Positive for uniQure (QURE) - Leerink

Leerink Partners analyst Michael Schmidt reiterated an Outperform rating and $27 price target on uniQure BV (NASDAQ: QURE), saying the discontinuation of Shire's (NASDAQ: SHPG) BAX 335 program is positive for QURE.

Schmidt commented, "SHPG (OP) announced on their 2Q16 earnings call today that they are discontinuing dev't of clinical stage hemophilia B gene therapy program BAX-335 and are focusing on advancing a different preclinical program instead given the inconsistent results seen to date. This is incrementally positive for QURE, since competition in hemophilia B has formed a major overhang on the stock. While several other gene therapy programs are currently in clinical dev't (e.g. ONCE, DMTX, SGMO), and ONCE's has generated highly impressive clinical data to date we believe that it is unlikely that one single gene therapy product will be used to treat all hemophilia B due to the product-specific limitations (e.g. neutralizing antibodies). We remain positively biased on QURE's stock given that it is trading below cash and QURE's current market cap reflects little to no value for AMT-060 or its gene therapy platform. In addition, QURE's GMP-grade commercial scale manufacturing capability represents in our view a strategic asset that could be attractive to competitors. Next updates from QURE's high dose cohort of the AMT-060 trial are expected by YE16."

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on uniQure BV click here. For more ratings news on uniQure BV click here.

Shares of uniQure BV closed at $7.37 yesterday.

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