Proteostasis Therapeutics Shares Initiated With Buy, $15 Price Target

HC Wainwright’s Andrew S. Fein initiated coverage of Proteostasis Therapeutics Inc PTI with a Buy rating and a price target of $15. The company develops disease-modifying therapeutics for diseases related to protein processing.

At a time when combination-driven treatments are being preferred, Proteostatis Therapeutics possess an attractive asset and platform, including a mechanism of action that increases mRNA stability and could be synergistic to all “corrector potentiator combinations in clinical development,” analyst Andrew Fein mentioned.

The company’s assets also include a preclinically-superior in-house triple corrector potentiator amplifier combination, due to enter the clinic as early as 1H17, Fein added.

Amplifiers And Their Synergistic Benefits

The limited clinical benefit of Orkambi in the F508del homozygous population has brightened the prospects for add-on agents that either boost the benefit in responders and/or provide an opportunity to induce response in the non-responder population, Fein stated.

Although several types of amplifiers are available in the market, Proteostatis’ CFTR “amplifier” PTI-428 offers significant synergistic and additive benefit. The analyst wrote, “PTI-428 emerged as the lead candidate from a series of compounds identified through the DRT platform that stabilize CFTR transcripts, increasing CFTR mRNA half life and protein levels.”

Fein expects several near-term catalysts, including Phase I biomarker data for CFTRmRNA and possible efficacy surrogate data, in 2Q16. The Phase 2 efficacy data for FEV1 is also possible by 4Q16 or 1Q17.