Received a $2 billion investment from AstraZeneca (AZN.US) + joint drug development! Summit (SMMT.US) surged in after-hours response

Zhitongcaijing · 2d ago

The Zhitong Finance App learned that anti-cancer drug developer Summit Therapeutics (SMMT.US) announced that AstraZeneca (AZN.US) will make a strategic equity investment of 2 billion US dollars in it, and the two sides will jointly develop drugs. Boosted by this news, Summit's US stocks surged nearly 17% after the market on Monday as of press release.

Summit said that AstraZeneca's current equity investment will be carried out in the form of convertible preferred shares. The corresponding common share price is 18.36 US dollars per share. This price is nearly 19% premium over Summit's closing stock price on Monday.

At the same time, the two sides will cooperate to carry out related research to combine an experimental drug from Summit, iVonesCimab, with AstraZeneca's Sonesitug vedotin for gastrointestinal cancer treatment. Summit said these studies will be launched “soon.” The two companies will each retain the rights to their drug molecules. In addition, the two sides also plan to conduct more tests to study the combined use of ivonescimab and other compounds of AstraZeneca, including antibody-conjugated drugs. The two companies will jointly fund these studies, and AstraZeneca will act as the initiator of the studies.

According to reports, Ivonescimab is Summit's core drug candidate. Currently, the drug is being tested in multiple indications, including some types of lung cancer and colorectal cancer. Earlier this year, data from a study of more than 500 Chinese patients showed positive results, but some doctors questioned whether these results applied to the American patient population, which is generally older than the participants in the trial.