Enanta Pharmaceuticals Inc (ENTA)

[vinmantoo]

With ENTA stock continuing to take a beating, I thought I would explain why I remain bullish and a buyer.

The EDP-235 data was quite good. It showed a good safety profile, showed a statistically significant improvement in symptoms and reducing their duration, in a highly vaccinated low risk population that had mostly been previously infected. In stark contrast, Paxlovid failed to do that in an similar low risk population, but one in which most were not yet vaccinated or infected. Despite this effectiveness in improving symptoms, the knock that drove ENTA down was the lack of viral reduction in nasal swabs, even though nasal swabs isn't a metric for approval and Remdesivir didn't do that either yet got FDA approval.

That left the conundrum of why EDP-235 showed robust anti-viral effects with regards to symptoms but not in nasal viral swabs. The anomaly was a rapid decreases nasal swab viral levels in the control group, possibly due to previous infection with Covid generating strong IgM responses. That would explain the rapid clearance in mucosal membranes in controls. ENTA looked closely and saw that if they examined patients who hadn't been previously infected, those without anti-nucleocapsid antibodies, there was indeed a robust viral reduction with EDP-235. Given that the vast majority in the EDP-235 phase 2 trial had been previously infected, that would explain why no difference was seen. The general population doesn't care but prospective partners will be assured. I know I am.