Kodiak Sciences shares soar after eye drug succeeds in late-stage study

By Siddhi Mahatole

March 26 (Reuters) – Shares of Kodiak Sciences surged 68.6% to their highest in more than four years on Thursday after the drug developer’s experimental drug met the main goal in a late-stage study in patients with diabetes-related eye damage.

Kodiak, valued at $1.39 billion as of Wednesday’s close, was testing the drug, Zenkuda, to treat diabetic retinopathy – an eye complication of diabetes characterized by damaged retinal blood vessels that can lead to leakage, bleeding, and potential vision loss.

In the trial, 62.5% of patients who received Zenkuda achieved at least a two-step improvement on a standard retinopathy severity scale at 48 weeks, compared with 3.3% of those on a sham treatment, the company said.

Patients also showed an 85% reduction in the risk of developing sight-threatening complications such as progression to proliferative diabetic retinopathy – a type of vision-threatening complication, according to the company.

Since the drug is built on Kodiak’s antibody-biopolymer conjugate (ABC) platform, the strong trial results could lift confidence in the company’s broader drug-development technology, J.P. Morgan analyst Anupam Rama said.

Kodiak said Zenkuda was well-tolerated, with the study reporting no cases of vision-threatening conditions such as inflammation of blood vessels or the eye.

Zenkuda is designed as a long-acting drug to block a protein linked to harmful blood-vessel growth in the retina.

The drug showed consistent efficacy among patients regardless of whether they were taking GLP-1 medications, the company added.

Kodiak said the results support an application for approval with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and that it plans to accelerate the submission.

UBS analyst Michael Yee said the positive safety data in diabetic retinopathy also de-risks Kodiak’s study in wet age-related macular degeneration, which will test both tarcocimab and KSI-501 and is expected to read out in the third quarter.

(Reporting by Siddhi Mahatole in Bengaluru; Editing by Srirj Kalluvila and Leroy Leo)