What happened
Shares of clinical-stage biotech company Vaxxinity (VAXX -10.42%) were up 28.2% for the week as of Thursday afternoon, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The stock closed at $2.02 a share last week and rose to as high as $2.63 on Thursday. The stock has a 52-week low of $1.24 and a 52-week high of $10.57.
So what
The company has a relatively small market cap of $307.57 million, so it doesn't take much interest to make the stock soar -- or drop. It focuses on synthetic peptide vaccines to treat chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, hypercholesterolemia, migraines, and infectious diseases.
It didn't make any announcements this week, but a number of factors likely contributed to the stock's rise. Vaxxinity completed phase 3 trials last month on its COVID-19 vaccine, UB-612, and cases remain high in China. According to Vaxxinity, UB-612 met its primary and secondary endpoints in a head-to-head booster trial against the approved COVID-19 vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Sinopharm Group. The company said it plans to submit rolling submissions to regulatory agencies in the United Kingdom and in Australia in the first half of this year.
Now what
Vaxxinty's shares are down more than 67% for the year. It's great that it got a bump, but this past week was a good week in general for biotech stocks. Until it gets approval for its COVID-19 vaccine or gets an FDA approval for any of its other pipeline therapies, it remains a risky stock for investors. However, if it does get approval for UB-612, that could bring some needed revenue to help it finance the rest of the early stage therapies in its pipeline. As of Sept. 30, 2022, it only had $102 million in cash. The company's lead candidate, VXX-401, is expected to begin a phase 1 trial in the first quarter of 2023. It was tested preclinically on non-human primates as a therapy to lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and cut the likelihood of cardiac events.
