Roth Capital Remains Positive on Peregrine Pharma (PPHM) Following Bavituximab Presentation

Roth Capital affirmed Peregrine Pharma (Nasdaq: PPHM) at Buy with a price target of $5 after the company announced the presentation of data from clinical translational studies of the company's phosphatidylserine (PS)-targeting immunotherapy bavituximab. Peregrine said that initial data from a pilot study of clinical translational ex vivo cultures show that bavituximab, both alone and with docetaxel, elicits evidence of a tumor-specific immune response in patients with human adenocarcinoma of the lung and that bavituximab exhibits an impact on tumors with negative PD-L1 expression.

Analyst Joseph Pantginis commented, We generally do not write on preclinical data, however we believe these data continue to represent important incremental steps in defining bavituximab's immunotherapy mechanism of action. In the lung model, immune response to treatment correlates with negative PD-L1 expression and low PD-1 expression on CD8+ tumor cells, which could represent a prognostic biomarker. We believe these data represent the closest ex-vivo model of the patient population being assessed in the ongoing Phase III SUNRISE study in second-line NSCLC. Nilogen’s drug discovery platform is described in the figure below. Over the next 12-months we expect to see an increase in visibility on the shares based on 1) completion of enrollment into the Phase III SUNRISE study, 2) incremental data updates from earlier clinical studies, and 3) increasing visibility for bavituximab's mechanism of action within the immuno-oncology landscape. The ~600 patient SUNRISE study in 2nd-line NSCLC is expected to complete enrollment by the end of 2015. By the end of April, we also expect final data from the Phase I IST in HER-2 negative metastatic breast cancer.

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