Key Pharma Stocks With Advanced Developments and Breakthrough Discoveries

PALM BEACH, Florida, June 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The biotech and pharma industries experienced a rather tough 2016 mainly due to the political uncertainty affecting the drug pricing controversy, but some key companies have seemed to bounced back somewhat this year with the NYSE ARCA Pharmaceutical Index gaining 11% year-to-date (YTD). With recent and significant developments as well as key discoveries for anti-cancer drug candidates, rare disease and replacement therapies, Pharmaceutical companies in the markets with news and developments include: Moleculin Biotech Inc. (NASDAQ: MBRX), Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: MACK), Lipocine Inc. (NASDAQ: LPCN), Immunogen, Inc. (NASDAQ: IMGN) and Clovis Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ: CLVS)

Moleculin Biotech, Inc., (NASDAQ: MBRX), a preclinical pharmaceutical company focused on the development of anti-cancer drug candidates, some of which are based on license agreements with The University of Texas System, on behalf of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, today announced the discovery of a metabolic inhibitor with the potential to treat pancreatic cancer. Read this and more news for Moleculin Biotech at http://www.marketnewsupdates.com/news/mbrx.html

"We've received a lot of attention from the scientific community for our glucose decoy technology (WP1122 Portfolio, Moleculin Presents Preclinical Data of Novel Inhibitor of Glycolysis at 28th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics, December 13, 2016) as a potential means to starve tumors to death by exploiting their hyper-dependence on glycolysis for energy production," commented Walter Klemp, Chairman and CEO of Moleculin, "and now we have identified possible new properties of our compound WP1234, a modification to WP1122. In pre-clinical testing, WP1234 has shown improved drug characteristics when compared with WP1122 and a 20 to 50-fold greater ability to kill pancreatic cancer cell lines when compared with traditional inhibitors of glycolysis. We know that pancreatic cancer thrives even in a reduced oxygen environment, which indicates it may be highly dependent on glycolysis to survive. This discovery now makes WP1234 a promising drug candidate to be studied for the treatment of pancreatic cancer."

Mr. Klemp continued, "Pancreatic cancer is still considered largely untreatable, so even modest gains in treating this disease could represent a significant clinical benefit. WP1234 improves on known inhibitors for glycolysis by increasing drug circulation time, which should increase the potential for drug uptake and destruction of tumor cells. We are excited about the potential to pursue development opportunities with WP1234 for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. We are also pleased to report that this discovery was the direct result of our ongoing collaboration with MD Anderson Cancer Center and the science team there will be presenting detailed findings to the scientific community in the near future."

In other industry news and developments in the pharma/biotech markets: 

Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: MACK) closed Tuesday up 6.72% at $1.27 on over 5 million shares traded by the market close. Merrimack this week announced completion of enrollment in the ongoing phase II study CARRIE, evaluating its pipeline candidate MM-141 (istiratumab) in combination with standard of care for treatment of patients with previously untreated metastatic pancreatic cancer. In Nov 2014, the FDA had granted an orphan drug designation to MM-141 for treating pancreatic cancer.

Lipocine Inc. (NASDAQ: LPCN) came to a close up 5.47% at $4.24 on Tuesday with a volume north of 8.4 million shares traded by the market close. Lipocine announced this week, the results from both the Dosing Validation ('DV') and the Dosing Flexibility ('DF') studies evaluating efficacy and tolerability of LPCN 1021. LPCN 1021 is an oral testosterone product candidate for testosterone replacement therapy ('TRT') in adult males for conditions associated with a deficiency of endogenous testosterone, also known as hypogonadism. The results from these studies confirm the validity of a fixed dose approach without the need for dose titration to orally administering LPCN 1021.

Immunogen, Inc. (NASDAQ: IMGN) closed up over 10% at $5.42 on Tuesday trading over 6.7 million shares by the market close. Debiopharm International SA, part of Debiopharm Group™, a Switzerland-based biopharmaceutical company, and ImmunoGen, Inc., a leader in the expanding field of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for the treatment of cancer, recently announced that Debiopharm has acquired ImmunoGen's IMGN529/DEBIO 1562, a clinical-stage anti-CD37 ADC for the treatment of patients with B-cell malignancies, such as non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL).

Clovis Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ: CLVS) closed up slightly at $88.68 after trading over 5.9 million shares throughout Tuesday. Clovis Oncology Inc said on this Monday late-stage data on its already-approved ovarian cancer drug showed that the treatment could benefit four times as many patients, sending shares of the U.S. biotech soaring 50 percent. Clovis's late-stage trial was designed to move its drug, Rubraca, up to a second-line treatment and later, a maintenance treatment. Maintenance therapy immediately follows initial treatment to keep patients cancer-free if they go into remission. Read more at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-clovis-study-idUSKBN19A0UC.

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