After getting beaten down from October through February, shares of Soligenix, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNGX), have been trying to creep their way back upward, including an explosion in value today that has catalyzed the stock to its highest level since October 21. Shares are surging on optimism for the development of the Princeton, New Jersey-based biotech's proprietary ricin toxin vaccine, or RiVax for short.
Funded in part by the National Institute of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and researched in collaboration with the New York State Department of Health, RiVax is being developed for the prevention of exposure to ricin toxin.
Ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the lethal dose in humans is only about the size of a grain of salt. Coupled with its high stability, rocin toxin has lethal potential as a biological weapon. There are presently no effective treatments for ricin poisoning, which can cause death within several days of exposure.
When formulated with ThermoVax, Soligenix's proprietary vaccine heat stabilization technology, RiVax has demonstrated significantly enhanced thermostability and 100% protection in preclinical ricin aerosol challenge models. These data are scheduled to be presented at the 20th Annual Conference on Vaccine Research, being held April 24-26 in Bethesda, Maryland.
It's not every day that notice of laboratory data being presented at an industry conference energizes a stock, but that surely is what is happening with SNGX in Wednesday action. Shares closed Tuesday at $2.57 and screamed ahead as high as $5.08 today before slipping back to $4.02, representing a gain of 56.4% so far on the day on record volume. While impressive, the stock is still far below the $8+ level before the drop began in October.
