Tuesday, Oppenheimer initiated coverage on Adverum Biotechnologies (NASDAQ:ADVM), a company traded on NASDAQ under the ticker ADVM, with an Outperform rating and a price target of $25.00. The biotech firm's focus is on gene therapy treatments, and its leading candidate, Ixo-vec, is designed to reduce the treatment burden for patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD (NASDAQ:AMD)), a condition affecting approximately 20 million people worldwide and 1.5 million in the United States.
Wet AMD patients currently need frequent anti-VEGF injections, ranging from once every one to four months. However, Adverum's Ixo-vec aims to provide long-term levels of Aflibercept, an established anti-VEGF agent, to potentially decrease the frequency of these treatments. Clinical results have shown a 94% reduction in treatment burden at six months and an 85% injection-free rate from the Phase 2 LUNA study. Additionally, data from the Phase 1 OPTIC study demonstrated an 84% burden reduction and a 53% injection-free rate for a period extending beyond three years.
The company has faced initial safety concerns, but the tolerability profiles in the ongoing studies, including Phase 1 with more than four years of high-dose data and preliminary six-month data from Phase 2, have been described as encouraging. Key opinion leaders (KOLs) have expressed a positive outlook on Ixo-vec's safety, efficacy, inflammation management, and its method of intravitreal administration. This has reinforced the firm's belief in the gene therapy's commercial potential.
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