KZR Stock Reports Positive Phase 2 Trials for their KZR-616 Drug

KZR is up over 90% in premarket trading (as of 8am EST), this is a massive jump, but it begs the question as to why this happened? Well upon a quick search of "KZR news" on Google, you might find one seeking alpha report that sounds like it would have all the information you would need to know about KZR's massive spike. However, you may become disappointed quickly as you need to sign up and start a free trial in order to read the information. You might have continued to search just to find subpar results, that was me this morning at least, BUT LOOK NO FURTHER, I will try to give you everything you need to know about the KZR Stock surge.

KZR 8-K Filing:

On June 27th (after market close) KZR Stock released an 8-K (Current) report which gave investors a large update on their business. Naturally investors welcomed and got excited over the contents of this filing, which has sent the price up massively. So what is in this filing?

This filing discussed KZR's Phase 2 FDA Results for their KZR-616 (Zetomipzomib) drug, which is molecular therapy that tackles immune-mediated diseases and cancer. Essentially this drug aims harmonizes the immune system (make sure your immune system is on the same page and working together) to fight off potential diseases and cancers.

KZR already has completed their Phase 1 trials and has moved on to their Phase 2 trials (which are the main focus of this report). Overall, KZR received meaningful results when testing the KZR-616 drug on hard-to-treat lupus nephritis (inflamed kidney leading to blood/protein in urine, and other kidney impairments/failures) patients over a 24-week period. Patients received a 30mg dose for the first week, then a 60mg dose for the next 23 weeks. After this they got off of the KZR-616 drug for 12 weeks where they performed routine safety follow-ups to make sure patients were able to get off the drug without any side-effects or complications.

Overall, there were 17 (of 21) patient that fully completed the study, which showed varying improvements in their renal response (RR), which is essentially the effectiveness of the drug. These RR of these patients were measured 3 times over the course of the study:

1. Week 13: 3 had no improvements, 2 had a 0-25% decrease in Urine Protein-to Creatine Ratio (UPCR), 2 had a 25-50% decreased in UPCR, 10 had a 50%+ reduction in UPCR (4 of which had a Complete Renal Reduction (CRR) which is the best case)
2. Week 25 (End of Treatment): 2 had no improvements, 2 had a 0-25% decrease in Urine Protein-to Creatine Ratio (UPCR), 2 had a 25-50% decreased in UPCR, 11 had a 50%+ reduction in UPCR (6 of which had a Complete Renal Reduction (CRR) which is the best case)
3. Week 29 (4 weeks post-treatment): 1 had a 25-50% decreased in UPCR, 16 had a 50%+ reduction in UPCR (6 of which had a Complete Renal Reduction (CRR) which is the best case)

As you can see the result got better with every test undergone. This is a good sign for KZR-616 as it shows that it is effective in improving immune and kidney health in patients with lupus nephritis.

However, some patients (less than 25% approx. 4) reported having symptoms such as fever, headaches, nausea, an injection site reaction, 2 patients reported having migraines and/or pulmonary artery hypertension. Side effects are common with vaccinations and medicines as many of us know, the only one that sounds worrying is the pulmonary arterial hypertension (narrowed/blocked blood vessels in the lungs).

Overall, it seems as though KZR's trials are very optimistic, and they will continue to move forward with these trails to progress to Phase 3 trials sometime down the line.