Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:PTGX)
Protagonist Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company yesterday before the market opened announced a worldwide agreement with Janssen Biotech Inc.
The agreement with Janssen was to co-develop and commercialize PTG-200 for inflammatory bowel disease. The agreement pays Protagonist $50 million in upfront payment and the possibility of an additional $940 million in development and sales milestones.
Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. CEO’s Comments
We are very pleased to partner with Janssen, a world-leader in the development of innovative therapies for patients suffering with chronic inflammatory and immunomodulatory diseases. As an oral IL-23 receptor antagonist, PTG-200 nicely complements Janssen’s current IBD portfolio,” said Dinesh V. Patel, Ph.D., Protagonist’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “The funding provided by this transaction enables us to advance our platform and clinical pipeline of innovative peptide drugs, including our lead oral peptide alpha-4-beta-7 integrin antagonist, PTG-100, which is currently in a Phase 2b clinical trial as a potential treatment for ulcerative colitis.” PR Newswire
PTGX Technical Analysis
PTGX opened trading yesterday at $12.28 which was up from the previous day’s trading close of $9.22, equivalent to a 49% increase. PTGX closed trading yesterday at $11.82. Taking a look at the daily chart we can see the last time PTGX traded above these levels we have to go back to April 5th when it traded at $12.38.
Taking a closer look at the daily chart we can see that before the spike up PTGX had been in an overall downward trend dating back to December 5, 2016 when it traded at $26.24. PTGX has a float of 7.03 million shares and traded 124.38 times the normal daily trading volume on Tuesday.
For day trading purposes, I would like to see PTGX open trading on Wednesday above $11.25 and if it does I would be looking to take a long position at the bell. My stop loss would be $0.30 from my entry position fearing anything more than that and the stock would start to fill in the gap up.
Company Profile
Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc., incorporated on August 22, 2006, is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with a peptide technology platform focused on discovering and developing new chemical entities (NECs) to address significant unmet medical needs. The Company’s product pipeline includes PTG-100, PTG-200 and PTG-300. Its primary focus is on developing oral peptide drugs that target biological pathways also targeted by marketed injectable antibody drugs.
PTG-100
PTG-100 is an oral, alpha-4-beta-7 (a4b7) integrin-specific antagonist peptide product candidate, which has completed a Phase I clinical trial in normal healthy volunteers (NHVs). PTG-100 is being developed for treatment of moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis (UC).
PTG-200
The Company’s PTG-200 is an oral Interleukin-23 receptor (IL-23R) antagonist being developed for moderate-to-severe Crohn’s disease (CD). PTG-200 is in investigational new drug (IND) enabling studies.
PTG-300
The Company’s PTG-300 is an injectable hepcidin mimetic for treatment of iron overload related rare diseases. Its peptides have applicability in a range of therapeutic areas in addition to gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. PTG-300 is in pre-clinical development. PTG-300 has utility for the treatment of iron overload disorders, such as transfusion-dependent b-Thalassemia, hereditary hemochromatosis (HH) and sickle cell disease (SCD).
The Company competes with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) Services, Abbvie, Roche and UCB S.A.