I’ve written about Hemogenyx before, especially into the run up to and during the Great Covid-19 stocks rally of 2020. Perhaps now rather ironically with the Covid stocks as an asset class cooling off, and Hemogenyx so far advanced in its key projects, it may be that now is the time for the buying frenzy we saw in the stock during April to resume? Indeed, the shares have now fallen back by more than half the level reached when the company announced its COVID-19 initiative.
Hemogenyx raised £2.5m recently at 7p – with some serious sophisticated investors being added to the shareholder register – and is even trading below that level. From the comments that I see flying around, some shareholders are incredibly impatient, expecting to see announceable events barely a week after it received its new money.
Having raised a small amount of money in January, Hemogenyx set about putting some flesh on the bones of its two new projects – both of which had grown out of the work it was doing already – one the viral defence work that it had already started before COVID-19 was even on the horizon and two the development of CAR-T antibodies for the treatment of the most common – and virulent form of leukaemia, acute myeloid leukaemia (“AML”).
It is pleasing to know though that the Market as well as the medical profession is beginning to remember there are other killer diseases that need a cure as well as COVID-19.
But back to COVID-19 – some shareholders seem obsessed with the idea that Hemogenyx needs a big name partner right now. Well, it has a partner in fact. But what it really needs right now is some money and the time in the lab to identify and isolate the curative antibodies and it has made a good start with this. For this purpose, its “special assistants” are the Advanced Humanised Mice. In layman’s terms they do not, unlike other humanised mice, reject the human cells infused into them – which means they are a better tool for isolating and propagating the needed antibodies.
Meanwhile everything seems to be moving forward positively in Hemogenyx’s core business.
Some people in the market seem to think that the three month renewal of the collaboration with “Global Pharma” is bad news. I read it as the opposite – in a period where the whole industry has turned its attention to finding a cure for COVID-19 and when labs have been closed during lockdown, “Global Pharma” has found the time and interest to renew and continue the project. Does it mean that nothing more will be heard for three months – well, certainly not necessarily.
The work that Hemogenyx has also done over the last eighteen months to develop an antibody which will greatly improve the efficacy – ie reduce the failure/mortality rate form current forms of CAR-T therapy is also remarkable considering the limited budget. In fact it is a tribute to the efforts of Vladislav Sandler and his tightly-knit scientific team we have seen positive developments with regard to a range of intractable and generally fatal diseases.
With the additional resources at their disposal, it is to be assumed they have been making further progress since a relevant announcement only four months ago. Should all of this be combined with fresh announcements on the commercial front it could very well be that we see a “second wave” of bullishness for Hemogenyx as it proves the breadth and creativity of its offering as compared to other companies that rose with the tide in the small cap pharma area post Covid-19.
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