Northwest Biotherpeutics (NWBO) - offering exciting cancer vaccines

My best stock idea got published on Forbes.com.

Check it!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkam/2015/03/06/northwest-biotherapeutics-is-a-best-idea/

My responses in an article format below -

I would like to nominate NWBO as one of my best stock ideas.

NWBO is a small biotech company in the Immuno-Oncology space. They have two products in clinical trials for the treatment of solid cancers.

DCVax-L is their lead product, it’s at an advanced Phase 3 stage for treating GBM brain cancer and their other product is DCVax-Direct for treating various inoperable cancers, it’s at Phase 1 in the clinic.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/record/NCT00045968?term=Northwest+Biotherapeutics&rank=3

NWBO’s approach to treating cancer is unique and very exciting.
NWBO claims their dendritic cell based cancer vaccine is able to boost and direct the immune system to attack ALL cancer cell antigens. Cancers are known to have a large variety of antigens so it makes sense that attacking all of them is your best chance of defeating the cancer. Current immunotherapy treatments are mainly designed to attack a single cancer antigen so it is not surprising current treatments are having limited successes with fighting cancers. Monoclonal antibodies, checkpoint modulators and CAR-T cells are all examples of single agents that are currently used in treatments.
http://www.nwbio.com/dendritic-cell-immunotherapy/

NWBO’s approach at treating cancer can theoretically be used to treat ALL types of solid tumors (operable and inoperable). So the potential market size for their treatments is huge. We have over 14M total cancer suffers in the US.
http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2011/browse_csr.php?sectionSEL=2&pageSEL=sect_02_table.21.html

The market valuation of NWBO is around 420M, up to 5 times smaller than other small biotechs that have excited Wall Street. KITE, JUNO, BLUE are examples of companies enjoying much higher valuations, they have CAR-T cell treatments under development (single agent antigen treatments). NWBO should be valued at least at these same levels, especially considering their vaccines have a seemingly superior mechanism of action (attacking ALL cancer antigens instead of just one) and their vaccine is also showing an excellent and superior safety profile.

NWBO’s vaccines are also much further along in their clinical development. DCVax-L at Phase 3 and DCVax-Direct will soon to move to Phase 2 in the clinic. JUNO and KITE treatments are just entering the clinical stages.  
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02348216?term=kite&rank=3

Results from clinical trials of NWBO’s vaccines are very promising and probably not well understood by investors.
DCVax-L at Phase 2 showed excellent efficiency bettering the standard of care by up to 3 times in patient Overall Survival (OS), from 14.6 months to 36 months.
DCVax-L is also running a Phase3 “Compassionate” trail for patients that were TOO SICK and not eligible for their main Phase3 trial. Data is available from this trial of 55 patients. Median OS is about two times longer for DCVax-L than the SOC, 18 months versus 8.5 months. These results are a big positive for DCVax-L considering the patients being treated have tumors that are further advanced (and larger) than those patients being tested in their main Phase 3 trial. The vaccine also showed an excellent safety profile with fevers being reported after the vaccine injection which was treated with Tylenol.
 
Based on the data presented so far I suggest there is a high likelihood of success for this vaccine. NBWO’s relatively low valuation suggests the market does not understand the data presented so far. DCVax-L Phase 3 results due in early 2016.

The German FDA equivalent is impressed enough with early DCVax-L clinical results to approve it for compassionate use in German hospitals, even before Phase 3 results are out.
UK’s medical board is also considering early approval of DCVax-L. I suggest these medical bodies have a better handle on what these early DCVax-L trial results mean.   

NWBO has suffered from negative media coverage particularly from thestreet.com Adam Feuerstein.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=106748854
 

I think this negative publicity has unfairly held back NWBO’s stock price. The main motivation for attacking NWBO may be its CEOs past where she was a vice-president at now infamous Enron.

As NWBO continues to progress its vaccines and show more positive data, as I expect, the media and investors will get behind and support NWBO because they truly offer a new and exciting hope for all cancer suffers.

 

Disclosure - NWBO is a core holding of my Marketocracy Fund. This Fund is available for investment at http://www.marketocracy.com/managers.php?manager=781
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