Clovis Oncology shares surge on competitor’s positive trial results

BOULDER — Shares of Boulder biopharmaceutical firm Clovis Oncology Inc., which has seen its stock price take a beating over the past seven months, climbed in value by 22 percent Wednesday thanks to some positive trial results of a competitor.

Clovis shares (Nasdaq: CLVS) closed at $15.06 Wednesday, up from $12.36 on Tuesday, though that’s still well below the stock’s 52-week high of $116.75.

Tesaro Inc. (Nasdaq: TSRO) saw its own shares more than double Wednesday after posting positive results from a Phase 3 trial for its ovarian cancer drug niraparib.

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Kennen MacKay, a biotech analyst for Credit-Suisse, said the results were significant for Clovis because its own ovarian cancer drug, rucaparib, uses the same mechanism of action in attacking cancer as niraparib. Both drugs are poly polymerase (PARP) inhibitors.

MacKay said that, initially, people in the industry thought that PARP inhibitors would work mainly for a narrow percentage of cancer patients with BRCA gene mutations. But the niraparib phase 3 trial showed strong results not only for BRCA patients but also in patients without the BRCA mutation, a development that potentially expands the market for PARP inhibitor drugs.

“The data from Tesaro today showed that it can actually work in a much broader population of patients,” MacKay said.

Rather than good results for a competitor having a negative impact on Clovis’ stock, which can often be the case in the biotech world, the potential broadening of the PARP inhibitor market from the Tesaro results had the opposite effect Wednesday.

Clovis officials could not comment on Wednesday’s developments because the company is in a quiet period related to its New Drug Application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for rucaparib.

One distinction between Niraparib and rucaparib, MacKay said, is that the Phase 3 results Tesaro reported were for the maintenance phase of treatment for ovarian cancer. That’s an earlier line of treatment than is being examined in Clovis’ Ariel II phase 3 trial, on which the current NDA submittal is based. But Clovis also has an Ariel III phase 3 trial looking at the maintenance phase of treatment that should report results next year.

While being first to market is key in the oncology market, MacKay said, Clovis would still have the opportunity with its Ariel III trial to post better maintenance data than Tesaro and compete with the company in the space.

“Tesaro has set a pretty high bar for this data,” MacKay said.

Successfully going to market with rucaparib would be a major boost for Clovis, which earlier this year pulled the plug on lung-cancer drug candidate rociletinib after receiving notice that it was unlikely to receive approval from the FDA. Clovis’ stock plunged last November from nearly $100 per share to $30 per share after the FDA indicated that data submitted with an NDA for rociletinib was insufficient.