Daily Brief Health Care: Sciclone Pharmaceuticals, New Horizon Health, Grifols SA, Genscript Biotech, Newron Pharmaceuticals, OSE Immuno and more

• Shareholders have given SciClone Pharmaceuticals (6600 HK)‘s buyback the go-ahead which will result in the major shareholder holding (upward of) 31.63%, and the freedom to creep.
• As such, a concentrated shareholder register, primarily comprising entities that privatised SciClone in 2017, gets even more concentrated.
• Trading inexpensively ahead of the launch of a new (and approved) drug, SciClone is worth a second look. 

For our next Corporate Webinar we are glad to welcome New Horizon Health’s CFO, Yu Gao.

In the upcoming webinar, Mr Gao will share a short company presentation after which, he will engage in a fireside chat with Smartkarma Insight Provider, Ke Yan. The Corporate Webinar will include a live Q&A session.

• Since mid-January, spreads have generally tightened across our liquid universe (8 have widened, 10 tightened, 1 at same level).
• Trade recommendations long ords / short prefs: Fuchs Petrolub, Henkel, Handelsbanken, SSAB Svenska Stal.
• Trade recommendations long prefs / short ords: Carlsberg, Sixt, VW, Danieli, MFE-Media for Europe, Grifols, Atlas Copco, Ericsson.

• Genscript doesn’t equal to CGT CXO or cell therapy company,although these two businesses have attracted a lot of attention. It’s inappropriate to look at Genscript only from these two perspectives.
• Genscript’s strength and core basic business is gene synthesis,which would remain promising growth. We’re also optimistic about Bestzyme. The chaos in CGT field won’t have a material impact on Genscript. 
• Investing a company/stock is essentially investing the people. Although Genscript has its core competence, our concern about this company lies in the management. Short-term trading is more appropriate for Genscript.

Newron Pharmaceuticals has announced positive interim results from the first 100 randomised patients completing one year of treatment (77 out of 100) in the Phase II 014/015 clinical trial (international, open label, rater-blinded study), in which evenamide is an add-on therapy to antipsychotics in moderate to severe treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS). The data are consistent with a gradual and sustained pattern of improvement in key efficacy measures compared with results after six weeks and six months of treatment, with the proportion of patients achieving meaningful improvements increasing over time. We view these updated results as particularly encouraging for evenamide as an effective treatment for TRS, and continued justification of Newron’s strategy to expand into this schizophrenia patient population.

OSE has announced that it has received positive recommendations from its ‘type C’ meeting with the FDA for the planned confirmatory Phase III trial design for Tedopi (neoepitope cancer vaccine), as a second-line treatment in advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after checkpoint inhibitor failure. This follows similar advice from the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The company will now undertake the pivotal trial as monotherapy (against standard of care) under this protocol, for patients with HLA-A2+ tumours (c 45% of total population). As a reminder, OSE reported positive data from the previous Phase III ATALANTE-1 trial as second/third-line treatment, although enrolment had to be terminated prematurely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.