What happened
Shares of Black Diamond Therapeutics (BDTX +4.79%) were up 174.7% for the week as of Thursday's market close after climbing as much as 213.7%, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The clinical-stage biotech company's stock closed last week at $1.82, then rose to as high as $6.85 on Wednesday. The driver for the stock's rise was early-trials data on a non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) therapy.
NASDAQ: BDTX
Key Data Points
So what
Black Diamond focuses on what it calls MasterKey therapies that target oncogenic mutations in patients with genetically defined cancers. On Tuesday, before the markets opened, the company released data from a phase 1 clinical study of BDTX-1535 to treat NSCLC. BDTX-1535 is an investigational epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) MasterKey inhibitor that is being looked at to treat NSCLC as well as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a cancer that forms in the brain or spinal cord. The company said the data showed that proof of activity by BDTX-1535 in NSCLC patients who had both acquired resistance and intrinsic driver EGFR mutations. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society, and NSCLC accounts for 80% to 85% of lung cancer diagnoses.
Now what
The big move up didn't last long, as the company used the positive news to announce a $75 million common-stock sale on Wednesday. While the stock sale wasn't a surprise, it drove the stock back down a bit because it will be dilutive to current investors. The company has four programs in its pipeline, but besides BDTX-1535, the most advanced therapy is BDTX-4933 to treat solid tumors and central nervous system tumors. That therapy just got FDA clearance on its individual new drug (IND) application, and Black Diamond said it expects to start a clinical trial for the therapy in the second quarter.
The stock sale should help the company develop its programs with a little bit of a safety net. It lost $20.9 million in the first quarter and had only $103.4 million in cash -- enough, it said, to fund operations into Q3 2024. The cash sale should extend that window a bit.
