Raising target price on Bristol-Myers

Update June 6. The spring/summer meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology is the occasion of the year for drug companies reporting new research on cancer treatments. This year Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) has had a great meeting with a research report showing that in a trial of patients with the most common and often deadly form of lung cancer 39% getting a mixture of Opdivo and Yervoy saw their tumors shrink after treatment. A second group that got Opdivo but with a smaller dosage of Yervoy saw a 47% improvement rate. (Lung cancer is the most deadly cancer in the United States and kills more than 158,000 people every year.) The results of the trials advances Bristol-Myers’ Opdivo as a key foundation for multi-drug combinations for the treatment of cancer and especially for patients with high levels of PD-L1, a protein that helps suppress the immune system. Opdivo belongs to a class of drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors that are designed to shut down some of the mechanisms that cancer cells use to evade the immune system. Imuno-oncology is one of the fastest growing and most promising areas of cancer drug research. By 2022 immuno-oncology drugs are estimated to make up a $34 billion sales market, according to Credit Suisse. That investment bank estimates that Bristol Myers has 38% of the immune-oncology market. (Roche has 23%, Merck 20%, AstraZeneca 12%,and Pfizer 7%, according to Credit Suisse.)