Why Investors Should Take Another Look At Alnylam Pharmaceuticals

Piper Jaffray reiterated its Overweight rating and $106 target price on Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ALNY despite discontinuation of ENDEAVOUR trial of Revusiran as it sees value in the company’s RNAi pipeline.

“While we await clinical data, we believe the death imbalance was either a revusiran specific or hATTR-CM disease issue (or mix of both) that does not apply to the rest of Alnylam's RNAi pipeline,” analyst Edward Tenthoff wrote in a note.

Tenthoff said Revusiran was Alnylam's only drug to incorporate 1st-gen Gal-NAc. The company’s other candidate, Patisiran, is an LNP encapsulated RNAi and the rest of the pipeline employs 2nd-gen ESC-GalNAc technology at significantly lower doses.

Meanwhile, the DMC subsequently reviewed safety in the on-going APOLLO trial of patisiran and concluded the Phase III should continue without modification. In addition, 90-day Phase II ORION-1 data on ALN-PCSsc was safe.

“We expect a busy ASH meeting in December with Phase I fitusiran, ALN-AS1 and ALNCC5 updates,” Tenthoff continued.

Alnylam will also report Phase I data on follow-on ALN-TTRsc02 and host an R&D Day on December 16.

At time of writing, shares of Alnylam rose 1.70 percent to $37.30. Shares are down 48 percent since discontinuing the Phase III ENDEAVOR trial of revusiran.