RBC must have a new note out.
May. 21, 2024, 01:25 AM
In a report released today, Charles Weston from RBC Capital maintained a Buy rating on Oxford BioMedica (OXBDF – Research Report), with a price target of p740.00. The company’s shares closed last Tuesday at $3.86.
Target price in GBP / closing price in USD just to add to the fog of war there. |
nice spot about the cross over for 20 and 50 MA with the 200 MA
hxxps://disfold.com/stock/lse-oxb/ |
 We are looking for motivated people to work as Biotechnologists who want to make a difference, delivering advanced innovative treatments to patients with unmet needs and join us at one of our facilities. The purpose of the role is manufacturing commercial and clinical grade viral vector batches within a GMP cleanroom facility.
Our manufacturing team is a critical part of Oxford Biomedica’s operations. We produce multiple clinical and commercial lentiviral vector-based gene therapy products, across seven cleanroom suites in Oxford.
We have opportunities at our Transport Way, Oxbox and Yarnton Facilities.
Your responsibilities in this role would be:
Largescale manufacture of ATMPs within GMP cleanroom facilities including:
Upstream adherent and/or suspension mammalian cell culture, transfection and harvest of viral vector products.
Downstream processing including clarification, chromatography, ultra/diafiltration and fill/finish activities.
Ensuring batch success by working using good aseptic techniques.
Preparing, cleaning and maintaining the GMP facility including performing viable and non-viable environmental monitoring.
Preparation of growth media and stock solutions using portable mixing tanks.
Completing Batch Manufacturing Records in a timely fashion throughout the manufacturing process.
Taking part in continuous improvement initiatives & development of production processes.
Investigating quality incidents, deviations and improving procedures.
Working to high standards of health & safety. |
Really unusual for a trial to start at P2 Xoptimist.
Normally P1 is safety / toxicology and P2 is efficacy and determining the best dose level. P3 proves the most therapeutic dose in significant numbers. CF will almost certainly be a P1 or P1/2 in summer.
Africa will probably need help. Have to be really careful how you phrase this, but the problem was never going to be making enough, the tough part is going to be making sure under 5's in malaria hotspots get 4 or 5 doses on time. |
I would caution that the volume today seems very low at the moment, and that wise men of the woods say that price movements on low volume usually don't mean much.
Anyone spot OXB's latest job ad? - note the plural
I would point out 3 things:-
1) The obvious multiple vacancies.
2) That they recruited 2 of these recently.
3) That they mention Yarnton when Yarnton was always sold to us a a stop-gap with a lease until 2024 and then it would move into OxBox.
So, does this mean they have such need that they are going to renew / extend the lease on Yarnton?
And
What is the need for multiple opportunities in production.
Best answer wins a signed copy of Prince Harry's book. Worst answer wins 2 copies. |
In thinking through the Serum announcement yesterday it seems obvious in retrospect that SI would want to grab the fanfare news coverage of starting the roll out in Africa before announcing any deal with OXB. And by the size of the first shipment of 43,200 doses to the CAR, it seems apparent there is still tortuous political and bureaucratic delays negotiating roll outs with various African governments - CAR not being first prize as a first beneficiary nor as substantial a country as Nigeria for example. Nevertheless these first baby steps should have cleared the last obstacle to finally announcing what I think we all now agree is an extremely high probability of an imminent SI agreement with OXB which hopefully with be for a minimum of 5 years.
In the meantime I have been pondering our deal with Boehringer Ingelheim about to go into Phase 2 human trials - I think I read somewhere in June - and what this might be worth to OXB in the short term given the amount of vector required for the lungs. Do we know anything about a) whether we get a substantial milestone payment on commencement of human trials; b) what the human trials might be worth to us in terms of revenues and c) if there is any short cut here beyond a 3 year process to commercialisation. And has anyone done any sort of back of the envelope calculation of what this might be worth to us ultimately in terms of royalties?
Finally on trading charts and indications I have been thinking that what was developing was a fairly classic F shaped bull flag - (albeit with the flag taking shape in a very narrow trading range) - but an interesting contribution this morning from Bloomberg that we are actually forming a golden cross with the 50 day MA rising above the 200 day MA. The analyst opined that in the 7 times OXB has formed a golden cross in the past 10 years the share price has risen on average 7.6% in the next 20 days. |
My mate told me this week (down the pub - where else) that his entire SIPP is invested in a FTSE 100 tracker - and he is smiling on recent performance....
Chart looking tasty again here - some goes at AT selling at 2.30-2.40 but here's hoping they only have limited ammo....nai etc |
Oh! Perhaps they are just starting;-) |
But they haven't started yet (my informant in JPMC), HSBC are speculating or just hoping. The investment industry seems to have been hollowed out by poor performance leading to a move to 'tracker' funds. |
British stocks represent a golden buying opportunity, HSBC has said.
The investment bank has told clients to buy UK-listed stocks, arguing that downward pressure on share prices from pension funds selling almost £2 trillion of assets has ended.
“The long-term structural overhang of UK pension fund selling is at an end; they simply have no more UK equities left to sell,” the bank’s research team said.
HSBC in fact expects retirement funds to start buying British stocks, amid political pressure to support the UK economy. |
Professor Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, said, “The start of the distribution at large scale of this high efficacy, very cost-effective vaccine should mark a turning point in the battle against malaria.”
From
Hopefully a turning point for OXB too. |
Regarding the relevance of the last post there, then if Serum have started to ship the vaccines which have been manufactured in advance and kept in cold store, then they must finally have the deal from the chain of international organisations which Prof Hill was recently saying was taking far too long to get done.
Are we dusting off one of our 1,000 litre covid bioreactors as I type? |
So, it has finally started...
Serum Institute Begins Shipments Of Malaria Vaccine 'R21/Matrix-M' To Africa
The initial shipment is being sent to the Central African Republic (CAR), followed by other African countries such as South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo in the coming days, it added.
New Delhi: Vaccines manufacturer Serum Institute of India (SII) on Monday said it has started exports of 'R21/Matrix-M' malaria vaccine to Africa as part of the global fight against the disease.
Developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford and Novavax's Matrix-M adjuvant, the R21/Matrix-M vaccine is the second malaria vaccine to be authorised for use in children in malaria-endemic regions, SII said in a statement.
The initial shipment is being sent to the Central African Republic (CAR), followed by other African countries such as South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo in the coming days, it added.
In total, 1,63,800 doses of the 'R21/Matrix-M' malaria vaccine have been specifically allocated for the CAR region, of which only 43,200 doses have been dispatched on Monday from SII's facility in Pune.
"The shipment of the 'R21/Matrix-M' malaria vaccine to Africa marks a momentous milestone in our collective fight against this life-threatening disease. This achievement is a testament to the power of collaboration and the efforts of our dedicated workforce at the Serum Institute of India, working in partnership with Novavax and the University of Oxford," SII Executive Director, R&D, Umesh Shaligram, said.
Novavax President and CEO John C Jacobs said, "The R21/Matrix-M vaccine is a vital new tool to help stop the devastating health and economic impact of malaria on nearly half of the world's population, including the tragic loss of 1,300 children every single day.". |
Mentioned many times here in the past Dom, but whilst I'm not going to put up the buntings for getting back into the £3 range when a smaller, lossmaking company was in the £5 range last year, it's still up 30%+ in a relatively short time and holding that level.
Things are not helped at present by OXB seemingly stymied by something which they can't talk about and which prevents / prevented the senior staff from buying.
We know there is this second commercial contract, which may or may not be with one of our vectors - and that's great news - but it's very unlikely to be the big secret.
We're only months away from IM giving OXB another 20m Euros for new shares. We've seen stories that Novo are looking specifically for bio services companies to place their weight loss profits into. We've talked about malaria for years now (since the Serum boss first mentioned it). Our huge pipeline (well, the fraction which isn't secret) moves ever forward each day.
I would expect something significant from OXB (on top of the good news story we know about). The timescale is the real unknown and that is likely out of their hands. Might be tomorrow / might be H2. |
The message doesn't seem to be getting through... to analysts (in particular), and investors. |
or
More process improvement. |
In the 'good old days' Friday was always an 'up' day. |
not sure about a Loch Ness Monster pattern, but it could very well be a Cup & Handle 🥳 |
I agree with all of that, but the other possibility of course is that they are simply going to manufacture someone else's vector to help with demand - so not our vector / tech improvements and therefore a straight manufacturing CMO deal rather than CDMO.
Usually the vector process is tied to the drug approval, so the vector would need to be made exactly the same way as by whoever supplied it for the trials, but that's a possibility too.
Just straight CMO style manufacturing would be less lucrative than making our own vector, but still good money for a long time. |
Thanks and as you say it doesn’t really matter who it is if one can overcome one’s impatient curiosity. The deal is done and it will be revenue accretive and it they have judged it passes the materiality threshold of being price sensitive and hence needing an RNS then whenever it comes it will be very pleasant |
Xoptimist,
It has never been clearly stated and I don't know this for certain, but my understanding is something like this:-
Juno developed the drug and target. Celgene bought Juno. BMS bought Celgene.
I'm sure you know this part but a vector is needed to turn the T-Cells into CAR-T cells with that target and Bluebird (at that time) both developed their own drugs and provided vectors for others. 270 was spun out of Bluebird.
We had a deal with Juno for some of their CAR-T and TCR-T targets but OXB have never told us which ones.
We know BMS have had supply issues (via press reports) and that they were trying all routes to get around that. We don't know what their solution was.
I think we were probably correct with discounting BMS as not a new company to us. We have existing deals with both Juno and BMS, so there's no way to spin that as new.
Similarly our deal with Arcellx (in a pivotal trial for the same disease) wouldn't make them new either.
It only really leaves J&J and as you say, to us they are a large pharmaceutical company, but, the line between a pharmaceutical company and a biotechnology company is pretty blurry and / or if OXB have done the deal with the biotechnology division of Johnson & Johnson (which actually says Jansen as the company on the approval)?
Plutonian when the RNS came out thought the best fit was Carvykti (J&J) and I can't come up with anything better.
They say the manufacturing is going to be OxBox and we know (press reports again) that the EMA has looked favourably upon Carvykti, so if you wanted my guess for tonight then I would say that a possibility here is J&J using a local Lentivector for the EMA market (i.e. OXB).
But it doesn't really matter who it is. The important thing is that the deal is already done and that we will soon have a second long term commercial supply line. The detail when it comes (hopefully soon) should clear it all up. |
I thought the discussion you guys have had about who this could be has been very smart and it’s most likely BMS or JNJ both of whom
Had FDA approvals for expanded use of their multiple myeloma therapies just 14 days after the March 20th RNS. What threw me was the wording “US biotechnology company” as neither BMS nor JNJ fit. So a question could the deal with with the junior biotech company which in the case of BMS is 2seventy bio. Is there any precedent where oxb signs a deal with the smaller biotech partner? In their recent results presentation 2seventybio also says that part of the FDA approval was for use of suspension lentiviral vector in the manufacturing of abecma. Surely this is the second commercial deal in the oxb slides which they took great pains on three occasions to say was excluded from the 104m backlog? |
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