Glaxo clinical trial disappointment in the price, says Panmure

2nd Apr 2014 10:03

Panmure Gordon has said that the disappointing outcome of GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) clinical trial for its therapeutic cancer vaccine MAGE-A3 is already priced into the stock.The broker kept its 'hold' recommendation and 1,750p target price.The MAGRIT trial, a phase three trial of its MAGE-A3 antigen-specific cancer immunotherapeutic in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, has been ended after GSK couldn't identify a sub-population of gene-signature positive NSCLC patients that may benefit from the treatment. The company has now called an end to the trial.Panmure said that MAGE-A3 could have been one of the "three particularly transformative pipeline opportunities". However, given that the product was "very high risk" in an unproven area, the stopping of the trial should not trigger major downgrades to consensus forecasts for MAGE-A3."Rather we view today's events as a missed upgrading opportunity," said Analyst Savvas Neophytou."Given the disappointment in another phase three trial in melanoma last year, we had written the product off so we make no changes to forecasts at this stage. With a further read-out pending (in melanoma subgroup) we are not pinning much hope on the product."The stock was down 0.76% at 1,581.39p by 10:32 on Wednesday.BC