Shares of RXi Pharmaceuticals (RXII) were up 6.52% after the company reported two new key patents for the sd-rxRNA technology platform. The first patent is for improved systemic delivery with the company's technology platform and improved local delivery to central nervous system disorders -- brain/spinal cord. The company improved the systemic delivery of the technology platform with chemical modifications and allowing it to be distributed in the body more readily.
RXi has always had systemic delivery but the company before could only deliver its RNAi molecules at higher doses or deliver it using a standard lipid nanoparticle -- delivery shield -- with lower doses. Now that RXi has improved systemic delivery it could possibly avoid having to use a lipid nanoparticle for delivery and can deliver RNAi molecules systemically at lower doses than before. This patent news is good to protect intellectual property of the company but the news today establishes improved delivery for systemic diseases. This opens the possibility to treat many systemic diseases like blood diseases and the liver.
In addition RXi was granted another patent for a protein known as MAP4K4, which the company can use to target inflammatory diseases and metabolic diseases. RXi has been trading with very high volume lately, hitting about 5 million to 7 million shares per day and going up over 30% over the last 5 trading days.
A lot of the huge volume may be attributed to the fact that over the last two weeks big institutional investors bought a lot of RXII shares; here is the breakdown for institutional buying over the last two weeks:
Empery Asset Management, LP bought 4.5 million shares (7.86%) of RXII on June 1, 2015
Frigate Ventures, LP bought 4.2 million shares (6.9%) of RXII on June 5, 2015
Sabby Healthcare bought 2.7 million shares (4.2%) of RXII on June 5, 2015
Intracoastal Capital LLC bought 3.4 million shares (4.99%) of RXII on June 8, 2015
The company is now seeing increased interest from retail plus new institutional investors shown above. There are a few other catalysts that could raise the share price higher in the coming months. These catalysts are:
- The IND filing for RXI-109 to start a phase 1 trial for retinal scarring of macular degeneration
- Early results in Keloid trial and 2nd hypertrophic scar trial
- Possible neurodegenerative deal as mentioned by CEO at Jefferies Presentation on June 4, 2015. CEO stated that deal would be similar to MirImmune type deal where company could potential get license payments to allow biotech company to use sd-rxRNA tech platform and other milestone payments to RXi.
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