Tracon Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: TCON) stock is up 58% this morning. That might be a bit much but there is something interesting going on in TCON stock. This isn’t just a flurry as the memesters and hoddlers pile in for a joke or a bet. Sure, the price might not be maintained, there are always swings and roundabouts. But it is actually possible that Tracon now has something both worth selling and also with buying. Which is nice - and it’s not a drug either.
So, the claimed business line: “TRACON Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the development and commercialization of novel targeted therapeutics for cancer in the United States. Its clinical stage products include envafolimab (KN035), a PD-L1 single-domain antibody for the treatment of refractory soft tissue sarcoma; and YH001, an investigational humanized cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 IgG1 monoclonal antibody that is in Phase I clinical trial for the treatment of various cancer indications” And there’s more like that. All of these are still in trials, none are producing any revenue, it’s a development stage pharma company. We’re also not getting any news about those trials to explain the stock price movements.
Tracon Pharmaceuticals stock price from Google Finance
However, what we are seeing that’s interesting is this: “today announced it has licensed its proprietary PDP of CRO-independent clinical research to a clinical stage biotech company for a $3.0 million upfront payment. “We are excited to announce the first license of our PDP to a company that recognizes the value of internalizing its clinical operations to reap the benefits of CRO-independent clinical trial implementation that we enjoy at TRACON,” said Charles Theuer, M.D., Ph.D., TRACON’s Chief Executive Officer. “We are now in a position to widely license our PDP to allow clinical stage biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to transform their clinical operations with the expectation of potentially dramatic cost reductions and shorter clinical trial timelines.””
They’ve developed a tool to run trials. They have managed a sale of this - a non-exclusive, non-transferrable licence - to another pharma research company. Maybe they can do this again?
Quite how much this is worth is another thing. But it is something very different - and don’t forget that in a gold rush the profitable place to be is selling shovels, not in mining.
