We came across Nascent Biotech Inc. (OTCMKTS:NBIO) last year and it caught our eye despite still trading on the OTC for just pennies per share.
The share price of a stock isn’t a very important number. Investment outcomes are logarithmic. It’s all about percentage change. And low-priced stocks with legitimate IP, assets, or operations and a plausible path to notable growth shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. This is especially true of biotechnology stocks in our experience.
NBIO provides a good example of this potential.
See Stem, Bet on Flower
Nascent Biotech Inc. (OTCMKTS:NBIO) is an emerging player in the $4 billion oncology drug development space with a legitimate IP asset possibly heading into Phase 2 clinical research for its first flagship pipeline asset. Besides the good news that it appears to have successfully navigated Phase 1 research, this stage of development is of particular interest to institutional money managers involved in the biotech space.
Phase 2 research is where the rubber really starts to hit the road.
This is when new star drug assets have the opportunity to shine in the public eye for the first time as early data from Phase 2 research tends to have implications for future market potential or the likelihood of eventual full FDA approval and commercial ROI.
It’s also when larger players in the drug space start to sniff around for potential acquisition opportunities. According to industry-leading publication Statnews.com, experts see the potential for a coming surge of mergers and acquisitions in biotech, which bodes particularly well for early-stage players in the space.
Stat’s analysis notes that the last surge in biotech acquisitions occurred from 2013-2018. During that period, nearly 25% of the acquisition targets hadn’t ever begun even a phase 2 trial. Many more come during Phase 2 as early data on efficacy starts to emerge and shape a picture of the outcome distribution ahead.
In other words, simply where NBIO is in the course of its development and commercialization process for its flagship cancer treatment suggests the potential for speculative interest starting to enter the picture. Naturally, once promising data begins to get public attention, the cat will be out of the bag and shares will be tough to chase.
Hence, we decided it would be a good idea to put NBIO shares on your radar now, ahead of the excitement phase that could follow the start of Phase 2 research ahead.
PTB: A Unique Oncology Asset
NBIO’s flagship drug is Pritumumab (PTB), a natural human antibody that binds to cell surface Vimentin (also referred to as ectodomain vimentin), which is a protein expressed on the surface of epithelial cancers. Ectodomain vimentin (EDV) is an ideal target for immunotherapy as it is expressed on the surface of tumor cells and is significantly overexpressed in glioblastomas (GBM).
In theory, the upshot is that PTB binds to the tumor to “recruit” the host immune system to eliminate cancer cells.
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are laboratory-produced molecules that can mimic the immune system’s ability to target and destroy cancer cells. These antibodies are designed to bind to specific antigens (proteins) that are present on the surface of cancer cells, triggering an immune response that can lead to the destruction of the cancer cells.
PTB is an interesting take on the mAbs oncology strategy as a targeted immunotherapy that “seeks out” cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
PTB began its R&D journey in 1982 in Japan. There wasn’t much follow-up to initial research. But Nascent Biotech moved in and reengineered the compound, particularly by mapping production through the Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell line platform for monoclonal antibodies to streamline the cost side of the equation.
The Journey
PTB has now completed its journey through Phase 1 human testing, and nothing from NBIO suggests the company encountered problems during the trial. In fact, NBIO recently presented its Phase I data at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago in a poster presentation.
If you are interested, the company noted in a recent release that its abstract can be located and surveyed on its website(www.nascentbiotech.com) Or at https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2023.41.16_suppl.2053.
In NBIO’s Phase 1 study, 15 patients received PTB and were evaluated for safety and efficacy analyses. 12/15 patients had a diagnosis of glioblastoma and one patient each had anaplastic astrocytoma, oligodendroglioma, and non-small lung cancer with brain metastases.
There were no dose-limiting toxicities to this natural human IgG mAb. Overall, the study reportedly found that single-agent Pritumumab is safe up to a dose of 16.2 mg/kg every 7 days in brain tumor patients. A phase 2 study is being planned as a test of the compound as a single agent as well as in combination with checkpoint inhibitors in both recurrent gliomas and upfront with chemoradiation in newly diagnosed gliomas.
One partial response showed nearly a 98.0% and 40.8% reduction in 2 tumor lesions over 17 months of study.
“The presentation displayed our Phase I data, which included our safety data at various dose cohorts and early outcomes data, was well received and viewed by interested parties at the conference. In summary, it showed the drug to be very safe at 5 ascending dose cohorts and definitive bioactivity in several patients,” stated Dr. Mini Gill who presented for the Company.
Shoring Up IP Control
A further likely positive signal is the fact that NBIO has also been actively shoring up its IP stronghold, recently announcing a move, in partnership with China based BioRay Pharmaceutical, to terminate the license agreement entered into on March 31, 2021.
With the move, Nascent regained its worldwide marketing and distribution rights previously licensed to BioRay. Management has clearly decided that regaining worldwide rights will put NBIO and its shareholders in a stronger position going forward.
This is an unambiguously positive development.
After all, why would management be concerned about re-establishing worldwide marketing and distribution rights for a pre-phase-2 drug if there were any indications at this point that pointed toward failure in Q2?
