UroGen stock rocketed Thursday on "unprecedented" test results for its bladder cancer treatment, a gel-based drug that avoids surgically removing tumors.
After three months, 79.6% of patients treated with UroGen Pharma's drug had a complete response, meaning evidence of their tumors disappeared. But what's unprecedented, says the company, is patients had an 82.3% chance of maintaining that response for at least a year.
Chief Executive Liz Barrett estimates that 82,000 patients live with this highly recurrent form of cancer each year in the U.S. These patients have bladder cancer that doesn't penetrate muscle tissue. Their cancer is considered intermediate risk.
On today's stock market, UroGen stock soared 37.6% to 17.50.
UroGen Stock: Tricky Cancer Treatment
It can be tricky to treat bladder cancer locally, Barrett told Investor's Business Daily in a March interview. Most locally applied medicines "get voided out quickly with urine." But chemotherapy — which comes with systemic side effects — can be too intensive for these patients.
"The benefit wouldn't be worth the risk," she said.
Historically, patients would have undergone multiple surgeries to remove tumors as they crop up.
"It's kind of like weeds in your yard," she said. "But you pull one weed and it pops up somewhere else. A urologist can only cut out what they can see."
Instead, Barrett proposes using a gel-based formula that releases the medicine over several hours. Eventually, the drug disintegrates and then gets voided out with urine.
Shares Hit 10-Month High
UroGen is now submitting data to the Food and Drug Administration in the hopes of winning an approval. The company expects to finish its submission in the third quarter. That puts potential approval as early as the first quarter of 2025.
UroGen stock hit a 10-month high on Thursday's news.
Follow Allison Gatlin on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @IBD_AGatlin.
