Northland Capital Partners Head of Research Vadim Alexandre caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss Evgen Pharma PLC (LON:EVG)
Q1: Now we’re talking Evgen Pharma PLC today, what’s the importance of today’s announcement?
A1: Yes, so today’s announcement was that they began dosing in the second Phase II trial which is a trial for breast cancer for their lead drug SFX-01 and basically the importance of that is once you start dosing patients you can have a pretty strong sense of when the trial will complete. The company expects this trial, now that it has commenced, to complete in H1 2018 and that’s not that far away and now that the first patient’s been dosed we can have a higher degree of confidence of that trial completing on time.
Q2: So, what are Evgen Pharma’s prospects over the next few years?
A2: This is their second Phase II trial that has commenced over the past 12 months and it’s the second trial now that’s dosing patients. The first trial that they commenced, not that long ago, was in another area, it’s in the area of stroke and that one had a recent announcement as well where they’ve indicated that they’ve dosed I think 26 or have 26 patients enrolled so that one’s recruitment is going well. Now that trial also, because recruitment is on track, expects to read-out in the first half of next year so in the not too distant future we expect 2 Phase II read-outs from Evgen, each of which could be significant value creation moments. A positive read-out from either the stoke trial or the breast cancer trial could see a significant uplift in the company’s share price and the main point at Northland is that these shares are grossly undervalued as a result. The company’s market cap is sub £20 million right now, one of their peers in the US just in the same area of stroke that the first trial is in is valued in the 100’s of millions so there’s a major discrepancy between the pricing as well Evgen has a second trial in breast cancer so another field. Another area that’s of interest for Evgen and where we see great potential is in the area of Multiple Sclerosis, they have some good pre-clinical data that has come through and we hope to see, again we’re talking about its prospect, a potential clinical programme coming out of Multiple Sclerosis which could be another big avenue for the company.
