With its main rival out of the race to develop sustained growth hormone therapy, Genexine saw its share price rose at the KOSDAQ market while most other bio stocks experienced a downtrend.
Recently, the U.S. pharmaceutical Versartis failed to prove the noninferiority of its growth hormone “VRS-317” against the control group in phase 3 clinical trial. The company conducted the clinical trial of VRS-317 under the condition of one injection every two weeks, the same as “GX-H9” that Genexine is doing.
As Versartis failed to conduct the clinical trial of the twice-monthly VRS-317, which had gone ahead of Genexine to conduct phase 3 clinical trial, the technology transfer of GX-H9 (phase 2 clinical trial) will likely be in an advantageous position, industry watchers said.
“Genexine can strengthen its competitive edge of technology transfer because of the failure in clinical trials of Versartis, its main rival,” said Lee Tae-young이태영, an analysts at Meritz Securities메리츠증권. “The company can take the lead in developing pediatric growth hormone therapy, especially, in tablets taken twice a month”
Major growth hormone therapies such as “NN8640” by Novo Nordisk Pharma노보노디스크, “HM10560A” by Hanmi Pharmaceutical한미약품 and “MOD-4023” by Pfizer화이자 are conducting clinical trials under the condition of administering once a week.
Earlier, Genexine announced the interim result of phase 2 clinical trial for its growth hormone GX-H9 (43 of 48 patients in total) for children who lack growth hormone, before the International Pediatric Endocrinology국제소아내분비학회.
In the clinical trial, the patients who took GX-H9 once every two week grew 12.3 centimeters a year, while those who took the control drug of Pfizer’s Genotropin every day grew 10.8cm.
Buoyed up by the news, the stock price of Genexine rose 1,500 won ($1.3), or 3.19 percent), from the previous day, closing last week’s trading at 48,450 won per share..
On Friday, the share prices of 52 bio-related companies in KOSDAQ market -- with the exception of Legochem Biosciences레고켐바이오(up 0.59 percent or 200 won) and Genexine -- fell.
As of last Friday, the market capitalization of the bio companies were Celltrion셀트리온 (17 trillion won), Celltrion Healthcare셀트리온헬스케어(seven trillion won), Medytox메디톡스 (3.1 trillion won), Sillajen신라젠(2.7 trillion won), Hugel휴젤 (2.2 trillion won), Viromed바이로메드 (1.8 trillion won), Kolon Life Science코오롱생명과학 (1.1 trillion won), Genexine (912.6 billion won) ,Meidpost메디포스트(722.2 billion won), Celltrion Pharm셀트리온제약 (630 billion won), and Cha Biotech차바이오텍 (591.8 billion won).