Lineage Cell Therapeutics (LCTX) is a sleeping beast that has major catalysts ahead. Today’s news comes from an announcement of two new cases of retinal regeneration confirmed by an independent third party.
The drug is used to treat dry macular degeneration (dry AMD). According to research, dry AMD is the leading cause of age related blindness and affects more than 30 million people worldwide with approximately 1.6 million people who are newly diagnosed yearly in the United States alone.
There are two forms of AMD, wet AMD which affects only 10% of patients and dry AMD which affects 90% of patients. According to the FDA there are only two FDA approved therapies for the less common wet AMD netting annual sales of more than $10 billion.
One thing you must note is that there is currently no FDA approved medical therapies for the 90% of AMD patients who suffer from the dry version (dry AMD) and since drugs that treat 10% generates $10 billion in revenue, we have a $90 billion dollar opportunity with LCTX stock.
However, we don’t know about the profit margins of this treatment yet but from my research on the process of STEM cells it does not seem very capital intensive.
This is a high risk high reward opportunity and I urge you to do more research on LCTX stock. The next big catalysts will be approval for a phase clinical trial, company is set to meet with FDA in late Q3/Q4 and trial could come as early as 2023 if approved, another catalyst is FDA breakthrough for a treatment they have with spine related injuries called OPC1 which also looks very promising.
Potential buyout underway?
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (RGEN) is a big player in wet AMD, if Lineage Cell Therapeutics succeeds with their Phase 3 trial and gets FDA approved I can see RGEN making an offer of buying out the company.
