What happened

Shares of German cancer immunotherapy company Affimed (AFMD -4.52%) were up by a healthy 7.1% as of 11:59 a.m. ET Monday. The biotech's stock was flying higher in response to a positive clinical update for its lead blood cancer therapy, AFM13.

AFM13 is a tetravalent bispecific antibody that links natural killer cells to tumor cells. Affimed provided its latest progress report via an oral presentation at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting over the weekend.

Natural killer cells attacking a tumor cell.

Image source: Getty Images.

So what

Three highlights from that presentation appear to be attracting investors to this stock Monday:

  1. AFM13, when used in conjunction with pre-complexed cord blood-derived natural killer cells, produced a 100% objective response rate in patients with CD30-positive relapsed or refractory Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas.
  2. The therapy's complete response rate stood at a whopping 62% following a second cycle of treatment in 13 patients treated with the recommended phase 2 dosage.
  3. Equally important, the treatment was exceedingly well-tolerated for a novel cell therapy, with no cases of cytokine release syndrome or other serious adverse reactions observed so far.

Now what

Affimed's stock does indeed appear to be a compelling speculative buy in the wake of these latest trial results.

The long and short of it is that the cancer patients in this study had relapsed following several prior lines of treatment. Yet Affimed's novel anti-cancer therapy was still able to provide a clear clinical benefit in this patient population. That's a good sign that AFM13 works as intended.

The real news, however, will come when the company delivers the phase 2 trial results for AFM13 as a monotherapy in patients with relapsed or refractory CD30-positive peripheral T-cell lymphoma. That data release is expected to take place in the second half of this year.