Piper Jaffray Reiterates Overweight Rating on Exelixis (EXEL)

Piper Jaffray is out with an analyst note this morning where they reiterate their Overweight rating on shares of Exelixis Inc

; they have a $7.00 price target on the stock. Piper analysts cited a strong showing at this year's American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago with 12 presentations and 2 analyst briefings. They noted, “While MET/VEGF inhibitor XL-184 stole the show with Phase II data from refractory glioblastoma (

), as well as NSCLC, adaptive randomized discontinuation, and long term medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) data, there were also updates from earlier stage pipeline including XL765, XL147, XL139 and XL228.” Exelixis also presented longer term Phase I data on XL184 in MTC (Abstract #5502). Piper Jaffray analysts said, “With a minimum of 20 months follow-up, 17/35 (49%) of patients showed at least 30% tumor shrinkage while 10/37 (29%) of those had a confirmed PR. We look for pivotal data in MTC next year to provide potential Fast Track approval in 2012." Exelixis also presented "promising Phase Ib/II data in NSCLC (Abstract #3017) and data from a randomized discontinuation study (Abstract #TP5188), which has identified NSCLC, melanoma, HCC and prostate cancer for potential expanded enrollment. We now envision a broad development plan for XL184.”