Shares of
Kindred Biosciences, Inc.
KIN
rose 8.3% after it announced that it has expanded an agreement with Vaxart, Inc.
VXRT
for the manufacturing of the latter’s oral vaccine for COVID-19 and other vaccine candidates. The manufacturing services will be performed via a wholly-owned subsidiary of KindredBio —Centaur Biopharmaceutical Services. However, shares of Kindred have slumped 43% year to date against the
industry
’s growth of 2.2%.
Centaur is a full-service contract development and manufacturing organization that specializes in protein-based biologics and virus-based products. With facilities in California and Kansas, the company’s capabilities span cell-line development, process development, analytical development, process characterization, clinical manufacturing and commercial manufacturing, including aseptic fill-and-finish. Under the terms of the expanded agreement, Centaur will be responsible for scaling COVID-19 clinical trial material into mid-size bioreactors at its California plant. In addition, itsKansas plant will be used for vaccine manufacturing at 2000L scale in its single-use bioreactors.
Vaxart’s COVID-19 candidate is the only oral vaccine to be selected for inclusion in the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed (OWS) program.
We remind investors that in May 2020, Kindred entered into an agreement with Vaxart to manufacture the latter’s oral vaccine candidate for COVID-19. Per the agreement, KindredBio would provide manufacturing services from its manufacturing facility in Burlingame, CA. Kindred entered into the agreement to produce the candidate vaccine bulk drug substance and provide it to Vaxart to be formulated into an oral vaccine tablet, as opposed to an injection.
Zacks Rank &Stocks to Consider
Kindred currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Some better-ranked stocks in the healthcare sector include Emergent Biosolutions Inc.
EBS
and AVEO Pharmaceuticals Inc.
AVEO
. While Emergent sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), AVEO carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here
.
Emergent’s earnings estimates have increased from $4.03 to $6.61 for 2020 and from $5.07 to $8.42 for 2021 over the past 90 days. Shares of the company have increased 101.5% year to date.
AVEO’s loss per share estimates have narrowed from $1.68 to $1.25 for 2020 and from $1.71 to $1.22 for 2021 over the past 60 days. Shares of the company have increased 7% year to date.
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