Will the share price of Telix Pharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX: TLX) go up after announcing patient news?
What’s Telix?
Telix is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of diagnostic and therapeutic products using molecularly targeted radiation (MTR). Telix is headquartered in Melbourne with operations in Belgium, Japan and the US. It’s developing a portfolio of clinical-stage products that address significant unmet medical needs in oncology and rare diseases.
Patient news
Telix announced today that the first patients have been dosed in the Phase III ZIRCON clinical trail of Telix’s renal cancer diagnostic imaging product TLX250-CDx in the US.
The objective of the ZIRCON trial is to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of PET/CT imaging with TLX250-CDx to non-invasively detect clear cell renal cell carcinoma in patients with indeterminate renal masses in comparison with surgical resection.
The ZIRCON trial, which includes twelve participating clinical study sites across the US and Canada, initiated patient recruitment in the US on Friday, with the first patients being dosed with TLX250-CDx at the University of California in LA and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The remaining seven US sites and three sites in Canada are expected to commence patient recruitment progressively over the next month.
Management comments
Telix Chief Medical Officer Dr Colin Hayward said: “We are pleased to have commenced the Phase III ZIRCON clinical trial in North America and wish to express our gratitude to Professor Allan Pantuck and Dr Delphine Chen, principal investigators at UCLA and SCCA, respectively, as well as their clinical research teams and patients, who have made this important milestone possible.”
Summary thoughts
Getting patients is a good step for Telix. I don’t know much about the product or indeed the company – it’s advisable to have an understanding of the medical side of things before investing in biopharmaceutical businesses like Telix. But that doesn’t mean it can’t continue to generate strong returns over the coming years.
However, I don’t usually like investing in these types of investments where it goes very well, or badly if the treatment doesn’t work or the regulator doesn’t approve it. In the healthcare space I think there are other ASX growth shares I’d rather buy like Volpara Health Technologies Ltd (ASX: VHT).