Summit Therapeutics Chairman and co-CEO Robert “Bob” Duggan. His firm, which licensed a most cancers drug from an organization in China in 2023, bought excellent news on Might 30, 2024.
{Photograph} by Christian Peacock/The Forbes Assortment
Discuss a inventory bump. Shares of biotech agency Summit Therapeutics greater than tripled on Thursday following excellent news a couple of drug candidate to deal with a kind of lung most cancers. The 272% surge in Summit’s inventory greater than doubled the fortune of pharma billionaire Robert (“Bob”) Duggan to $7.5 billion in a day, Forbes estimates.
“That was not unhealthy for in the future’s work,” Duggan, the chairman and co-CEO of Summit Therapeutics, joked late Thursday in a name with Forbes. “I used to mow lawns for 50 cents a day.” Duggan owns about 78% of Summit’s inventory. His co-CEO Maky Zanganeh, who owns about 5% of Summit’s shares, is now value practically $500 million, per Forbes estimates.
Shares went on a tear following a statement issued Thursday by Summit {that a} section 3 trial of its drug candidate ivonescimab outperformed Merck’s blockbuster drug Keytruda for sufferers with regionally superior or metastatic non small-cell lung most cancers. For context, most cancers immunotherapy drug Keytruda generated gross sales of $25 billion final 12 months, reportedly making it the world’s top-selling medication. Summit Therapeutics inventory closed Thursday at $10.92 a share, up from $2.93 on Wednesday.
Says Zanganeh of why Summit’s inventory probably rose a lot: “No person ever beat Ketryuda earlier than.”
In December 2022, Summit introduced it could license the experimental most cancers drug from Hong Kong-listed agency Akeso for $500 million up entrance and an extra $4.5 billion if sure regulatory or business milestones are met. The drug candidate is an antibody that mixes the results of most cancers immunotherapy and the prevention of recent blood vessel development (anti-angiogenesis) in a single molecule. The section 3 trial of 600 sufferers is being carried out in China by Summit’s companion Akeso; sufferers are receiving infusions each three weeks.
The first objective of the scientific trial is to measure progression-free survival of sufferers taking ivonescimab vs. Keytruda. The assertion from Summit Therapeutics–which it described as “a prespecified interim evaluation carried out by an unbiased Information Monitoring Committee”— stated that the Summit drug candidate “demonstrated a statistically vital and clinically significant enchancment” in comparison with Keytruda, however didn’t present particular particulars. The complete information in regards to the trial will likely be offered at a medical convention later this 12 months, probably in September, Zanganeh advised Forbes.
Duggan’s first massive success in drug growth got here with Pharmacyclics, a penny-stock biotech the place he turned CEO in 2008. A drug within the firm’s pipeline, Imbruvica, turned a blockbuster remedy for B-cell cancers, together with continual lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a standard type of leukemia in adults. Drug big AbbVie acquired Pharmacyclics in 2015 for $21 billion, making Duggan value $3 billion.
In 2020, Duggan bought greater than 60% of the Nasdaq-listed Summit Therapeutics’ inventory for $63 million and have become CEO. The corporate, based in 2003, hadn’t produced a lot income. When Forbes checked in with Duggan within the fall of 2020, he was betting on Summit’s success with a brand new antibiotic for the frequent however lethal an infection Clostridioides difficile (C. diff). Although the drug confirmed some promise when examined towards present antibiotics, Duggan ultimately determined that he didn’t need to spend one other $100 million on one more trial. “It didn’t make sense for me to try this,” he explains. “Let’s pivot to oncology. Will probably be far more rewarding for sufferers that for us to do battle with generic antibiotics.”
Provided that the information on the ivonescimab trial is from an interim evaluation, there is no such thing as a assure that the drug candidate will proceed to outperform Merck’s blockbuster Keytruda. Although the outlook appears promising, shareholders—and sufferers—might want to watch for extra information.
