The release of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting abstracts has become almost as much of an anticipated event by Wall Street, analysts, media and the biopharmaceutical industry as the meeting itself, which this year runs May 29-June 2 in Chicago.

Are those short items updating ongoing or completed clinical studies from companies and their collaborators enough to move share prices or do investors bide their time and react once the full data are made known during the event itself? To answer that question, we analyzed the valuation changes of the approximately 85 public biotechnology and big pharma companies presenting data, covering the week the abstracts were released (May 11-15). Those results, described below, will then be compared to the changes in share prices of those companies that occur over the course of the meeting and the final results will be published in the June 8 issue.

The tsunami of cancer drug data contained in the thousands of ASCO 2015 meeting abstracts released last week certainly serves to shine a spotlight on the incredible amount of ongoing research and development taking place globally in oncology.

Although great strides have been made, the disease, in all its forms, continues its relentless onward march with, according to the American Cancer Society's (ACS) latest statistics, an estimated 1.65 million new cancer cases expected to be diagnosed and 589,430 cancer deaths expected to occur in the U.S alone this year. The ACS found that prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men (26 percent), followed by lung (14 percent) and colon and rectum (8 percent) cancers. Among women, breast (29 percent), lung (13 percent) and colon and rectum (8 percent) cancers are the most common forms.

The quest to reduce those numbers is why so much attention is devoted to the lead up to and the ASCO meeting itself.

HOT CHECKPOINT

Although drugs being advanced as checkpoint inhibitors are hot with investors, the share values of their developers did not see any significant jumps even though consensus among analysts is that immunity-based approaches to cancer treatment will be the central theme of the meeting. From our research, the leading gainer from the group of public companies presenting data at the ASCO meeting was Seattle-based Oncothyreon Inc., whose shares (NASDAQ:ONTY) rose a whopping 69.3 percent in the analysis period.

The company will have posters on its small-molecule selective inhibitor of HER2 in breast cancer, ONT-380, currently being tested in a pair of phase Ib trials; one in which it's paired with Kadcyla (ado-trastuzumab emtansine, Roche AG) and another adding the compound to Herceptin (trastuzumab, Roche) and Xeloda (capecitabine, Roche).

The reduction of the compound's side effects and efficacy appears to afford advantage over another drug with a similar mechanism of action, neratinib, from Los Angeles-based Puma Biotechnology Inc., a company also expected to be in the spotlight at ASCO. (See BioWorld Today, May 15, 2015.)

The company's shares (NASDAQ:PBYI), however, took an almost 10 percent hit during our reporting period as investors reacted to an ASCO abstract on data from the firm's phase III Extenet trial with neratinib for the extended adjuvant treatment of breast cancer, top-line results of which were reported last summer. The benefits did not appear to be strong when compared with a placebo in a study of more than 2,800 patients with breast cancer that overexpresses the HER2 protein.

In a research note RBC Capital Markets analyst Simos Simeonidis suggested investors' angst was unwarranted, since he viewed the data as positive and expected presentation of the full dataset to reveal the real extent of neratinib's benefit in the extended adjuvant setting.

VOTE OF CONFIDENCE

Vascular Biogenics Ltd. (NASDAQ:VBLT) got a vote of confidence from investors following its announcement that it will present strong phase I/II data for VB-111 in recurrent platinum-resistant Mullerian cancer. The company's shares rose 37 percent in the reporting period.

Principal investigator Richard Penson will present interim data from the ongoing trial that will include results in patients with recurrent platinum-resistant Mullerian cancer treated with multiple doses of VB-111 and weekly paclitaxel. The anti-angiogenic agent utilizes VBL's vascular targeting system to home in on endothelial cells in the tumor vasculature for cancer therapy. VB-111 contains a nonreplicating adenovector, a modified murine pre-proendothelin promoter and a Fas-Chimera transgene to angiogenic tumor blood vessels, leading to their apoptosis. The company also recently reported positive, statistically significant data evaluating the efficacy of VB-111 for the treatment of recurrent glioblastoma (rGBM), and said it expects to initiate a pivotal phase III study in rGBM under a special protocol assessment with the FDA midyear.

CANCER VACCINES

Princeton, N.J.-based Advaxis Inc. saw its shares (NASDAQ:ADXS) advance 10 percent. The company is presenting a poster on its phase I, dose-escalation, open-label, single-center study in subjects with carcinoma of the cervix who have failed conventional therapy. ADXS11-001 is a live attenuated Listeria monocytogenes (Lm)-LLO immunotherapy bioengineered to secrete an antigen-adjuvant fusion protein (fused to HPV16 E7). The primary objective of the study is to evaluate the tolerability and safety of ADXS11-001. Secondary objectives are tumor response, progression-free survival and correlative immunologic studies.

Last week, the company entered a nonexclusive research and clinical trial collaboration agreement with Sorrento Therapeutics Inc., of San Diego, to evaluate combinations of Advaxis's Lm-LLO cancer immunotherapy technology platform, including ADXS-HPV, ADXS-PSA and ADXS-HER2, with Sorrento's fully human antibodies targeting immune checkpoints, including GITR, OX40, LAG-3 and TIM-3.

Under the terms of that agreement, Advaxis will conduct the studies and the companies will share the expenses equally. The companies hope to commence the first of the two planned combination studies in 2016.

CAR-T SLOWING

It is difficult to attribute the dip in stock values of CAR T high-flyers to the publication of the ASCO abstracts alone. Companies such as Juno Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:JUNO), Kite Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ:KITE) and Bellicum Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:BLCM) have faced some headwinds lately and in the reporting period their share prices dipped 10.5 percent, 16.8 percent and 11.2 percent, respectively.

Commenting on Juno, analyst Cory Kasimov of J.P. Morgan noted updates for JCAR015 and JCAR014 were both largely in line with what has been seen previously from both programs and at the conference, analysts will be looking for more follow-up data from JCAR015.

Analysts clearly will be paying close attention to all CAR T players at ASCO and it will be interesting to see whether the additional data from them will be enough to help reverse their recent performance on Nasdaq.

RESULTS SO FAR

Our analysis found that overall the ASCO abstracts did help improve stock valuations, and as a group they recorded a 3.2 percent increase in share prices. Watch out for the second part of this feature which, in addition to seeing how the companies fared during the meeting, will also introduce our new BioWorld Cancer Index that will track the progress of public cancer-focused biotech companies going forward.