Biotech small cap Lisata Therapeutics jumps 10% on partnership with Novo subsidiary

Quotes on Lisata Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company developing therapies to combat tumors, gained more than 10% yesterday, April 15, after it announced a partnership with one of the largest industry manufacturers, Catalent, to evaluate the efficacy of a promising Lisata therapy. Since December, Catalent has been owned by Novo Holdings, the controlling shareholder of Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, a global leader in weight-loss medications.

Yesterday, Lisata advanced 10.70% on the Nasdaq to $2.17 per share, the highest closing price since March 31, before giving back 6.45% in after-hours trading.

Earlier in the day yesterday, Lisata announced it had entered into a research license with Catalent, which provides drug development and manufacturing technologies to other firms, to determine whether combining Lisata’s product candidate, certepetide, with Catalent’s SMARTag platform can enhance the efficacy of the cancer treatment.

The combination of these two technologies could “revolutionize precision oncology” and improve treatment efficacy, claims Kristen K. Buck, executive vice president of R&D and chief medical officer at Lisata.

Under the terms of the agreement, Catalent will assume all R&D expenses, while Lisata will provide consulting support. Additionally, the latter will receive an upfront payment with future considerations contingent upon the results of the study.

Lisata is down almost 30% for the year to date. It lost a third of its value in January after the company revealed that phase II clinical trials of certepetide for pancreatic cancer failed to show significant improvement in patient survival. The company plans to begin the final, phase III trials in 2026.

According to MarketWatch, the two analysts who cover Lisata both rate it a “buy.” Their average target price is $18 per share, eight times the current market price.

Lisata Therapeutics is a pharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing innovative cancer treatments. Its main technology, the CendR platform, is designed to improve drug delivery and penetration into tumors. Certepetide is the company’s lead product candidate emerging from CendR.

In December, Catalent announced it had been acquired by Novo Holdings in a deal that valued the company at roughly $16.5 billion. Novo Holdings is the controlling shareholder of the Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, the maker of the diabetes and weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy. As part of the deal, Novo Nordisk acquired three manufacturing sites in the U.S.