Pieris Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: PIRS) stock last closed at $2.50. The PIRS stock is currently trading at $2.52 and is up by 0.40% at this time of writing.
The current positive trend in the PIRS stock movement comes after the announcement by the clinical-stage biotechnology company of amendment in its collaboration with Seagen.
The biotech company’s specific clinical-trial focus
Pieris is a biotech company that specifically focuses its clinical-trial experiments on Anticalin protein-based drugs. The clinical stage company focuses on the developing and discovering of Anticalinto focus on targeting validated disease pathways in a way that is efficiently impactful. The company’s future and current treatment projects consist of respiratory diseases and immune-oncology multi-specifics associated with tumor.
How does the amendment in agreement specifically change the collaboration?
The amendment in the collaboration with Seagen in detail specifies Seagen’s strategic equity investment. This amendment in detail switches the option of development, promotion and commercialization rights of the existing immune-oncology agreement for the second of up to three products in the alliance. This investment has a purchasing price of $13 million in PIRS common stock. Total amount of stocks correlated to this investment will consist of 3,706,174 shares at the price of $3.51 per share.
Furthermore the contractual reinstatements allow Pieris’ collaboration co-promotion option instead of co-development and co-commercialization of the project. At the same time, Seagen will solely be responsible for the development and commercialization of the project. Pieris can also increase its royalty if it chooses to implement this option.
Both companies have also entered into a clinical trial collaboration agreement that will determine the efficacy of combining cinrebafuspalfa (PRS-343) with TUKYSA. PRS-343 is a 4-1BB/HER2 bispecific experiment of Pieris with Seagen’stucanib which is a small-molecule tyrosine kinase HER2 inhibitor. Both HER2 inhibitors are to be combined to test the treatment of gastric cancer patients that are depicting low HER2 levels. The safety of this test is also to be evaluated as part of Pieris’s upcoming phase 2 studies.
The significance of this collaboration
The significance of this combination of HER2 inhibitors is that it can address uniquely and specifically the patients with HER2 low expressing gastric cancer who do not respond to HER2-targeted therapies. Pieris lives up to its aim of combing and developing unique and innovative treatments for immune-oncology and respiratory diseases. In past, the PIRS stock went up due to similar collaboration and partnership announcements on projects with AstraZeneca, Servier and Seagen.
