After Its Stock Crashed 42% in 1 Day, Is Verve Therapeutics a Buy?
Since reporting some early-stage clinical data from one of its gene editing programs on Nov. 12, share prices of Verve Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VERV) are down 42%. But contrary to what you may be assuming based on the drop, no news was reported that regulators were halting its clinical trials or that it was discontinuing any of its programs. And there's no sign that its intentions are to do anything other than continue onward with advancing its pipeline, full-steam ahead.
So is this biotech worth buying, or did the market act appropriately and dump Verve's stock because there's something obviously wrong? Let's dive in.
Verve's program for heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH), VERVE-101, is currently in its phase 1b clinical trials, and it's also the lead program in its pipeline -- and is in fact its only clinical-stage program. In theory, VERVE-101 is intended to permanently edit patients' genes such that their LDL-C cholesterol levels are reduced, thereby correcting the hereditary defect driving those levels higher. After all's said and done, the goal is for patients to have normal or close-to-normal cardiac risks. If the medicine makes it to the market, likely many years from now, it could treat as many as 3 million people in the U.S. and Europe alone.
Source Fool.com
