Multiple patent families and clinical programs empower Inhibikase to combat neuro-degenerative diseases – and serve a vast market
It’s tragic: Parkinson’s disease is responsible for 60,000 new cases and 38,000 deaths each and every year in the U.S. There’s an immediate need for novel therapeutic approaches – and yet, the advancement of new therapies for neuro-degenerative diseases lags behind other drug development areas.
Thankfully, a burgeoning body of research is revealing the critical roles that protein kinases play in the molecular mechanisms that underlie neuro-degenerative diseases. One notable pharmaceutical company in particular is leading the way in leveraging kinase inhibitor drugs while reducing risk and improving treatment outcomes.
Headquartered in Atlanta with additional offices in Boston, Massachusetts, Inhibikase Therapeutics (IKT) stands on the leading edge of kinase inhibitor science – and now, there’s even hope that the company’s novel therapeutics could halt the progression of Parkinson’s and reverse functional loss.
A Closer Look at IKT Stock
We’ll take a deep dive into Inhibikase’s potentially game-changing research – but first, it’s time for a checkup on the company’s stock, which happens to be available right now at a terrific price.
Inhibikase closed its public offering of 1,800,000 shares of IKT stock in December of 2020. That’s a tight share structure, meaning that the company isn’t printing up a ton of stock shares and thereby diluting their value.
Personally, I prefer to take positions in stocks near their 52-week lows. IKT stock has traded at $10 and could certainly get there again, but currently the share price is closer to the bottom of its range than the top.
At $5 and change, IKT stock is trading at a bargain price. Some folks will probably buy the shares and hope that they return to $10 for a 2x gain.
However, it’s not unusual for stocks to move much higher after they’ve broken above a key level like $10. In other words, the sky’s the limit once IKT stock starts to regain its momentum.
Targeting Disease, Stopping Functional Loss
Inhibikase Therapeutics’ proprietary drug innovation engine, known as the Re-engineering Approach with Metabolism Preserved or RAMP, allows the company to pursue clinically validated kinase inhibitors to develop novel drugs to treat neurological and non-neurological diseases.
The company also uses Prodrug technology, a platform that enables greater control over non-hematological side effects common to kinase inhibitor therapies, such as nausea or diarrhea, and which may improve drug delivery into the target tissue.
Through the RAMP and Prodrug platforms, Inhibikase Therapeutics is developing three distinct product candidates.
The first is IkT-148009, which targets underlying disease mechanisms to halt the progression of, and reverse the functional loss associated with, Parkinson’s disease in the brain and the gastro-intestinal complications of Parkinson’s disease.
Currently in Phase I of clinical development, IkT-148009 is a once-daily oral medication which comprises compositions-of-matter patent protection through 2036.
In clinical trials of IkT-148009, no clinically significant adverse events have been observed across five dosing cohorts – and amazingly, in studies of mice, IkT-148009 stopped the loss of neurons and reversed functional loss.
Rounding Out the Pipeline
Another promising product in Inhibikase’s pipeline is IkT-001Pro, which is designed to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a slowly progressing cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow.
IkT-001Pro has shown to be potentially as much as five times safer than imatinib (the first FDA-approved Abl kinase inhibitor) in non-human primates, blunting the severe gastrointestinal side effects of imatinib therapy that occur following oral administration.
This drug has received Orphan Drug Designation for stable-phase CML and will follow the development pathway for approval through the 505(b)(2) regulation, with Investigational New Drug (IND) filing expected for Q3 2021.
Inhibikase’s third product candidate, IkT-01427, is designed to block the causative virus of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) from replicating in the body. PML is a rare disease that causes rapidly fatal brain infection in approximately 50% of patients.
I’m glad to report that the company is well capitalized to pursue all of these high-conviction clinical programs, as Inhibikase had cash and cash equivalents totaling $9.6 million as of March 31, 2021.
Inhibikase President and CEO Milton Werner is preparing all stakeholders for exciting new developments with all three of his company’s drug candidates – though I must admit, IKT-148009 is the center of attention.
“Concurrently, we are advancing two long term toxicology studies in animals, which will allow for chronic administration of IKT-148009 in patients following FDA review and acceptance,” Mr. Werner recently reported.
The Takeaway
At the moment, IKT stock is extremely affordable and could be poised for a swift rebound in the near future.
Any good news about IKT-148009, or Inhibikase Therapeutics’ other promising drugs in development, should help the stock to easily reach all of its price targets.
