What happened
Shares of Terns Pharmaceuticals (TERN 2.32%) were up 30.7% for the week Thursday afternoon after being up as much as 37.2% for the week, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The healthcare stock closed at $8.92 last week and rose to as high as $12.42 on Wednesday, its 52-week high.
So what
The clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company released its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings on Monday. The company doesn't have any marketed products yet and has no revenue, but it has strengthened its cash position to $283.1 million, enough, it says, to fund operations into 2026.
The company focuses on therapies to treat various oncology targets, obesity, and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), an inflammatory disease of the liver that is the second-leading cause of liver transplantation. The company's lead NASH therapy is TERN-501 and the company said in its earnings release that it expects data from its phase 2a trial to treat NASH midway through this year. The company also has TERN-601 and its TERN-801 series, both obesity drugs in the preclinical stage, as well as TERN-701, which is in a phase 1 trial to treat chronic myeloid leukemia.
Terns also announced on Monday it was hiring Emil Kuriakose as a new chief medical officer (CMO) in charge of its oncology programs, effective May 1. Kuriakose, most recently the CMO at Calithera Biosciences, has also worked in developing oncology therapies at Novartis.
Now what
The news that TERN-501 expects a midyear top-line readout on its phase 2a trial is significant because there is no approved drug yet to treat NASH and according to data by Precision Reports, the NASH market size is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 48.4% between 2022 and 2029, becoming a $47.61 billion market by that time. According to the NASH Education Program, the disease is expected to become the leading cause of liver transplantation by 2025.
