Stock Alert: Mersana (MRSN) Working To Make 2020 A Transformational Year?

(RTTNews) - Mersana Therapeutics Inc. (MRSN), which believes that 2020 has the potential to be a transformational year for it, has gained 36 percent so far this year, based on Feb.14 closing price of $7.80.

Mersana Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a pipeline of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) targeting cancers.

The Company's lead drug candidate is XMT-1536, under a phase I clinical trial in patients with ovarian cancer and non-small cell lung cancer adenocarcinoma. XMT-1536 is being evaluated in dosages of 36 mg/m2 once-every-four-week, 43 mg/m2 once-every-four-week and 52 mg/m2 once-every-four-week. The study consists of two segments - dose escalation (DES) and expansion.

The dose-escalation data from the 52 mg/m2 once-every-four-week cohort of XMT-1536 is expected in the first half of 2020.

The expansion data from the 36 mg/m2 once-every-four-week, 43 mg/m2 once-every-four-week cohorts of XMT-1536 are also expected in the first half of 2020, with more mature data in the second half of 2020.

Next up in the pipeline is XMT-1592, which has shown four times greater efficacy in a lung tumor model in preclinical testing compared to XMT-1522, a phase I cancer drug, whose development was discontinued last January, following a strategic evaluation by Mersana. The Company expects to advance XMT-1592 into clinical testing in the first half of 2020.

The Company also has 4 compounds in the discovery stage.

Recent Quarterly Scorecard:

Net loss for the third quarter ended September 30, 2019, narrowed to $16.8 million or $0.35 per share from $17.1 million or $0.74 per share, for the same period in 2018. Collaboration revenue for the third quarter of 2019 was approximately $0.8 million compared to $2.2 million for the year-ago quarter.

The Company ended September 30, 2019, with cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $112.0 million, and is expected to be sufficient to fund its operating plan into at least mid-2021.

MRSN has traded in a range of $1.32 to $8.93 in the last 1 year.