Our top speculative idea for 2015 a classic early-stage platform; the company is a leader in the discovery of innovative protein therapeutics, explains John McCamant, editor of The Medical Technology Stock Letter.
Five Prime (FPRX) has built an extremely impressive library comprised of more than 5,600 human extracellular proteins, which represents virtually all of the body's medically important targets for protein therapeutics.
Importantly, the company’s protein technology platform, business model, and intellectual property have all been validated by their impressive list of corporate partners, including Bristol-Myers and Glaxo SmithKline.
In our view, FPRX’s management team has all the right ingredients for success with an experienced roster that has a tremendous track record in bringing protein drugs to the market.
Management execution will be key to FPRX’s future growth and is even more critical in a platform company, which we expect will continue to generate a plethora a partnerships as they fully leverage their cutting edge technology.
FPRX is focusing its internal research in the red hot sector of immune-oncology (I/O). Cancers grow and spread because tumor cells have developed ways to evade elimination by the immune system.
One of the most exciting recent discoveries in cancer therapy has been the identification of ways to release these brakes and allow the immune cells to once again kill tumor cells.
This new approach has the potential of not only reducing tumor growth like traditional therapies, but potentially eliminating the cancer entirely in some patients. New targets for I/O are needed to address those patients that do respond to or cannot tolerate agents currently in development.
In our view, FPRX and their cutting edge protein library puts them in the proverbial cat bird seat when it comes to identifying new targets and protein drugs in I/O.
In our view, FPRX has all the ingredients to become a biotech winner; a powerful protein discovery platform that is expected to deliver many drug candidates and an experienced management team with proven track record of successfully developing protein drugs for major markets.
Importantly, FPRX is poised to become a major player in I/O, quite possibly the hottest and most exciting space for biotech investors today.
