Galectin Therapeutics Still A Favorite Pick Of H.C. Wainwright Analysts

• H.C. Wainwright reiterated a Buy rating and $7.00 price target on shares of Galectin Therapeutics Inc GALT on Monday.
• The company announced last week that it had initiated a Phase 2a Psoriasis study.
• Shares of Galectin are down more than 1.4 percent on Monday trading.

Late last week, Galectin initiated a pilot study of GR-MD-02 in 10-patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, a condition that affects about 2 percent of the U.S. population and is mostly untreated yet. Moreover, it should be noted that results of the Phase 1 study for NASH were also quite encouraging.

Management said it would consider the trial successful if more than half of the patients meet the primary endpoint (a 75 percent amelioration in the severity of the disease after 30 days of the final infusion).

If the results of the aforementioned pilot study are positive, analyst Yi Chen assures it could strengthen the company’s pipeline for GR-MD-02. However, his $7.00 price target currently does not take into account the value of the psoriasis drug.

On top of Phase 2a Psoriasis study, the expert notes, there is a chance that Conatus Pharmaceuticals Inc CNAT needs to include imaging tests like the ones being evaluated in Galectin’s NASH-FX trial to meet additional endpoints required for its Phase 2 trial of oral emricasan, which enrolled “22 evaluable patients with portal hypertension and compensated liver cirrhosis that was predominantly due to NASH or HCV.”

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.