Shares of Australian nano-cap biotech Immuron IMRN rose sharply Wednesday on roughly 250 times average volume.
Immuron develops oral immunotherapies for preventing and treating gut-mediated pathogens.
What Happened
Immuron said the Shigella challenge model – a cooperative R&D project with the U.S. Department of Defense – that assessed the therapeutic potential of Travelan as a preventive treatment of shigellosis or dysentery showed positive results.
In an animal study that evaluated 12 juvenile rhesus monkeys - eight treated with Travelan and four with placebo - twice daily for a total of 12 doses over a six-day period, three days prior to the administration of Shigella organisms, it was shown that all Iin the placebo-treated group displayed severe inflammation in different parts of gastrointestinal tract and high levels of inflammatory cytokines in fecal samples.
Only three of the eight Travelan-treated patients had signs of inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract, and only two of those had high levels of inflammatory cytokines in fecal samples.
"Overall the results suggest that Travelan is functionally cross-reactive and may have some prophylactic activity against Shigellosis," Immuron said.
Why It's Important
Every year about 1.5 billion episodes of diarrhoea occur worldwide, leading to the death of about 2.2 million people, Immuron said.
The company also noted a preventive treatment for enteric diseases, specifically Shigellosis, is a high-priority objective for the U.S. Army.
Immuron said the abstract of the study findings has been submitted for presentation at the 10th International conference on Vaccines for Enteric Diseases to be held at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, from Oct. 16-18.
Immuron shares traded higher by 17.7% to $3.65 at time of publication.
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