Shares of Ampio Pharmaceuticals (
AMPE) have rebounded by roughly three bucks over the past few weeks as many
major catalysts are set to materialize later this year and eary next. As the latter stages of development of the company's 'respositioned' pipeline are being transitioned for the commercial phases, Ampio recently
boosted its management team with addition of Dr. Deborah Knobelman, a move that immediately strengthens the company's position in initiating the next chapters in Ampio's rapidly-developing history.
The most immediate chances for this company to bring a product to market lay with Zertane, a repositioned pain medication that has already been on the market for years and is planned to be introduced by Ampio to market as a treatment of premature ejaculation (PE). The target markets for the treatment will all be outside of the United States, for the time being, since the US FDA does not recognize PE as a qualified medical condition. Although I'm sure the female population of the US would disagree with that ascertain by the FDA, those are the facts.
The company
announced this week that data from the clinical Phase III Zertane trials will be published in 'European Urology.' This is a significant event for Ampio, as European Urology has an extensive global reach, with more than 20,000 urologists across the globe included in its readership. Given that Zertane is being prepped for commercial launches and potential partnerships in both Europe and Asia, there's no time like the present time to start getting the word out.
Shares of AMPE look to have settled for the time being in the mid-$7 range, but if key developments and catalysts continue to materialize, Ampio could quickly turn into a major growth story.
Aside from the commercialization of Zertane, multiple clinical trials for the company's other product candidates are set to finalize over the next quarter or two.
Lead product Ampion, for example, is being developed to target the $80 billion anti-inflammatory and autoimmune disease markets. The advantage of bringing Ampion through trials and to market in quicker-than-normal fashion is that it is a biologic - a molecule already produced by the human body (as albumin).