Tengion had a press release earlier today, announcing that they will have several presentations on the company's Neo-Urinary Conduit™ (NUC) and Neo-Kidney Augment™ (NKA) programs at the TERMIS North America Annual Conference now being held (December 11-14), in Houston, TX. Reading the press release tells us that the data set is building for both the NUC and NKA programs. We believe that the market size on the kidney program is off the charts, but acknowledge that the program is still pre-clinical so it’s not a driver for the stock yet.
What we find striking here is the fact that Tengion was a rising star. IPO'd by two of the best healthcare Wall Street firms and since that time, the stock has plunged, now trading at a little over a $10 million market cap with some trading liquidity. According to the September SEC filing, the Company had $9 mln in cash and $11 mln in short term investments versus $1.9 mln ST debt and $3.3 LT debt.
We have seen the NUC device and the technology is impressive. We see a company like Tengion, and fast followers in the space like Organovo as breakthrough technology plays. Perhaps we will see interest from Medical technology companies who are more familiar with the intense surgical procedures and specialized markets for devices that take interest in a product like NUC.
Our View: We would not give up on Tengion here.
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Neo-Urinary Conduit: Oral Presentation
- Genetic Stability of Autologous Human Smooth Muscle Cells (http://www.tengion.com/news/documents/Justewicz-SMC-Stability-Tengion-TERMIS-NA-Houston-14Dec11.pdf)
- Characterization of Chemotherapy and/or Radiation Treated Human Smooth Muscle Cells for Use in Regenerative Medicine (http://www.tengion.com/news/documents/Justewicz-Cancer-Secretome-Tengion-TERMIS-NA-13Dec11.pdf)
Neo-Kidney Augment : Oral Presentations
- Selected Regenerative Renal Cells combined with Bioresorbable Natural Biomaterials Catalyze in vivo Kidney Tissue Regeneration (http://www.tengion.com/news/documents/2011-Jain-TERMIS-NA-Presentation.pdf)
- Multivariate Analysis of Preclinical Data from the Tengion Neo-Kidney Augment (http://www.tengion.com/news/documents/Spencer-TERMIS-Presentation_121411_rev2.pdf)