Immune Pharmaceuticals CEO Talks Company And Its Recent Market Rally

Shares of Immune Pharmaceuticals Inc IMNP were trending last week, gaining as much as 76 percent in three days. With no material news surfacing, it seemed like the rally was driven by a recent article that featured the company.

Shares have given up most of the gains on Thursday trading. However, they are still up almost 15 percent since Monday.

After the spike, Benzinga reached out to the company’s CEO Daniel G. Teper, Pharm.D., who shared some insight into the move, the stock and the company.

Getting Familiar With The Nano-Cap Company

Immune Pharma focuses on the application of immunology to treat autoimmune diseases and cancer, the chief executive explained. “Throughout the years, we built a very significant pipeline proactively, but also [...] when we made the reverse acquisition of a company [EpiCept Corporation] that led to our public listing.”

“Today Immune Pharmaceuticals remains a micro-cap company, even after the raise in the stock price in the last few days. It’s really four companies in one,” he explicated. “IMNP, the public company, will focus solely on the development of Bertilimumab, which is an antibody that had been developed originally by Cambridge Antibody Technology.”

And Bertilimumab

The company’s lead product candidate, Bertilimumab, is being developed to treat ulcerative colitis and bullous pemphigoid. Nonetheless, the company has also mentioned other potential indications including severe atopic dermatitis — an indication that has also been successfully pursued by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc REGN using a drug with a “distinct but similar method of action,” Crohn’s disease, several respiratory conditions, and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

“In addition to that, we’ve filed a patent, several months ago, on the oral administration of Bertilimumab for the treatment of NASH,” he added. “So, Bertilimumab is a very versatile target [...] you can look at in in two ways: You can look at Bertilimumab for specific orphan indications like bullous pemphigoid, and if the results of the Phase II are favorable, this is a program that we can take forward to Phase IIb, III, and potentially to commercialization; or you can look at it become an orphan dermatology company; or you can look at it more broadly and say that Bertilimumab has multiple indications, and is maybe more relevant in some than others [...] but it’s too early to say.”

“It’s really a pipeline drug that should be most attractive to big pharma companies or big biotech companies for further development,” he went on. “I think we’ll know that better some time in 2017, and if it’s the latter, which is basically an indication portfolio in a single drug, there’s a high probability that we’ll pursue discussions with big pharma companies to work for development or licensing of Bertilimumab.

“We don’t need the drug to be the best-in-class in every single indication to reach its full potential,” the exec concluded. “Actually, if only it shows efficacy in bullous pemphigoid, that, by itself, is an orphan indication where we could have sales between half a billion dollars and over a billion dollars with an accelerated development.”

The Stock Move

Finally, Benzinga asked about the recent spike in the stock price.

“The hypothesis is that our stock price has suffered from two major factors: The financings that the company had needed to do over the years, particularly the preferred financing in the summer of 2015, [which] was responsible for substantial dilution over time and selling pressure. In parallel to that, the company has had delays, one related to quality control in the manufacturing of Bertilimumab — which was then satisfactorily resolved — [...] but investors had expectations that we would move faster,” Teper voiced. “So, the combination of the aggressive financing with significant dilution and selling pressure, and the delays has driven the stock price down.”

“If you look at the situation today, we’ve got a clean cap table, there’s no more preferred shares; the investors from the summer of 2015 have essentially sold their shares, so there’s no more selling pressure; and from an operational standpoint, the team that was hired in early 2016 is now showing results [...] there is no more short-term financing because we completed a financing of $11 million from a single ‘friendly’ investor at market, so we can take money at market as needed [about $1 million or $2 million per month],” he added, assuring that all of this financing will be allocated to the development of Bertilimumab.

All the other assets will be distributed into three subsidiaries with promising prospects, which provide further opportunities for Immune Pharmaceuticals shareholders, he concluded.

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