[Click eStock] "AprilBio, Focus on Clinical Success Potential"

Korea Investment & Securities has raised the target price of AprilBio by 6% to 35,000 KRW, judging that the clinical success potential of AprilBio is high.

Jaeju Wi, a researcher at Korea Investment & Securities in Weihai, explained, "Lundbeck is expected to announce the interim results of the Phase 1b clinical trial of AprilBio's new drug candidate APB-A1 for thyroid eye disease (TED) patients as early as the third quarter of this year, and the qualitative evaluation results indicate a high possibility of success."

He emphasized, "APB-A1 will emerge as a new treatment option for TED, a disease that requires a safe and differentiated mechanism of action new drug. If you have not paid attention to AprilBio due to the lack of short-term momentum and uncertainty of partner’s clinical success, now is the time to bet on clinical success based on scientific evidence."

APB-A1 is a CD40L inhibitor that blocks the binding between CD40, a type of immune checkpoint, and CD154, the ligand of CD40 (CD40L). It can inhibit the binding of CD40 and CD40L, which enhances the activation of B cells and T cells, attracting industry attention as a next-generation drug mechanism for autoimmune disease treatment.

UCB and Biogen are jointly developing dapirolizumab pegol (a CD40L antibody) and successfully completed a Phase 3 clinical trial for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) last year. After announcing the results at the American College of Rheumatology on November 19 last year, UCB’s stock price rose cumulatively by 12% over five trading days, increasing its market capitalization by 3.8 billion euros (approximately 5.5 trillion KRW).

Researcher Wi said, "We raise AprilBio’s target price by 6% to 35,000 KRW," adding, "The recent rise in some biotech stocks was due to interest rate cuts, increased likelihood of technology exports and clinical success, which raised the likelihood of approval (LOA) of their pipelines. Since AprilBio’s stock price had not risen until now, it can be re-evaluated from now on."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.