Biotech Analysis Central Preview Series: Voyager Therapeutics

This is a preview blog series on what you can expect when subscribing to my "Biotech Analysis Central" service marketplace. For the full article you must subscribe to my service. This is just an intro of two snippets on the research articles that are written. Thus far, there are about 300+ research reports on both both small-cap and mid-cap biotech stocks with full analysis of the pipeline, catalysts, financials, and clinical trial analysis. If you want to read more then please subscribe to my marketplace service. As always I offer a 2-week free trial just to show you how helpful my service is. You can cancel anytime before the 2-week free trial is up and never be charged a dime.

First Section Of Marketplace Article (This article piece was originally written on September 7, 2020)

For this Biotech Analysis Central Update Series I wanted to go over again a biotech by the name of Voyager Therapeutics (VYGR). The reason why I wanted to go over this again next is because I believe it has potential to offer some upside for investors. As I have explained in the past, it is a gene therapy biotech that is primarily working in the area of developing therapies for neurological diseases. The main therapy in the pipeline is VY-AADC, which is a gene therapy that is being developed to treat patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD). Why do I believe this offers investors some upside potential? That's because it has 2 to 4 year data already from phase 1/phase 1b studies. Therefore, the technology of gene therapy by Voyager is quite robust. Secondly, the stock has been beaten down despite the massive potential that it has. A big reason for that was because it lost its partner Sanofi (SNY), however, it happened because of a different reason than you might think. The bottom-line is that Sanofi wanted some U.S. rights for VY-AADC, but the CEO wanted to keep U.S. rights. Thus, Sanofi didn't take the option to license it. It was not because of data, which I will be going into detail below. One last item to point out is that Sanofi did choose to restructure its partnership with Voyager in terms of other items. Sanofi still wants to keep its partnership with Voyager to focus on developing adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids for delivery of virus for 2 non-CNS (Central Nervous System) diseases. The stock got beaten down, so I think it has room to grow. One upcoming catalyst that will help in this regard is the upcoming updated data from two studies using VY-AADC to treat patients with Parkinson's Disease. The data from both of these studies will be presented at the MDS Virtual Congress 2020 September 12-16 2020. This will include final 3-year data from 3 cohorts of the PD-1101 phase 1b study and 2-year data from PD-1102 phase 1 study. Several studies paused due to Covid-19 pandemic are also set to resume soon in 2nd half of 2020. I believe this and additional developments have potential for upside.

Conclusion Of Marketplace Article

The Final Verdict is that Voyager Therapeutics is a good speculative biotech to look into. I believe the preliminary data on VY-AADC improving motor function in patients and reducing medication needed are good findings. However, the phase 2 study RESTORE-1 is still ongoing, which uses a placebo. It will be important to see that the gene therapy far outweighs the placebo surgery being used. The stock has fallen quite a bit, where it used to trade at around $27 per share in June of 2019. Although, it's important to note that it was with several partnerships with other big pharmaceutical companies. As I explained above, Sanofi wanted U.S. rights and Voyager wasn't willing to give that up. AbbVie (ABBV) was another company to drop research with Voyager as well. In this instance, Tau and alpha-synuclein AAV capsids were in research. They made it through research and AbbVie chose not to continue. Whether or not these research items worked out is hard to say, but in any case Voyager retook the rights for them. One item to note is that these Tau and Alpha-synuclein were based on a preclinical partnership made with AbbVie back in 2018/2019. It has nothing to do with VY-AADC or VY-HTT01, which are currently being evaluated. The global market opportunity for Parkinson's Disease is expected to reach $5.69 billion by 2022 and then Huntington's Disease market is expected to be valued at $1.5 billion by 2023. These indications, plus ongoing research to develop gene therapies using next generation AAV capsids in preclinical testing. The stock dropped on AbbVie leaving though and thus the lower share price that exists today.The market cap is around $400 million, which is a decent valuation for now. I feel strongly though that successful data from the upcoming data releases from MDS this coming week could help increase the market cap.