ASX Health Stocks: Cannabis play ECS Botanics enters burgeoning German market, share price up 20pc

ECS Botanics enters the German market
Immutep moves forward in Phase IIb study

Cannabis stock ECS Botanics (ASX:ECS) rose 20% this morning after securing a $9.9m supply agreement into the German medicinal cannabis market.

ECS executed a binding agreement with Ilios Santė Gmbh to exclusively supply four medicinal cannabis strains with a minimum revenue of $9.9m of GMP manufactured medicinal cannabis products over the next three years.

First supply is anticipated once product registration has been completed.

Ilios Sante is part of the Bloomwell Group, which also includes Algea Care, Germany`s leading platform for therapy with medicinal cannabis.

Meanwhile, the German medicinal cannabis market continues to grow strongly, with German legislators recently moving to legalise recreational use.

ÉCS’s Head of European Operations, Michael Clark, believes Germany provides a foot in the door for ECS to enter Europe.

“Securing an agreement with a long term partner in Germany was an essential building block of ECS`s EU market access strategy,” Clark said.

“This partnership enables ECS and Ilios Sante to grow an exciting and sustainable business together in Europe`s largest medicinal cannabis market.”

ECS Botanics share price today:

Immutep pushes forward in Phase IIb trial

Immutep (ASX:IMM) says it has achieved a 50% enrolment milestone (of the planned 154 patients) in its randomised Phase IIb TACTI-003 Trial for first line head and neck cancer.

The TACTI-003 is evaluating Immutep’s first-in-class soluble LAG-3 protein eftilagimod alpha, in combination with Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab) as 1st line treatment of recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (1L HNSCC).

HNSCC is the sixth most common cancer by incidence worldwide, with 890,000 new cases and 450,000 deaths reported in 2018.

It is an aggressive, genetically complex, and difficult to treat cancer, and is associated with high levels of psychological distress and compromised quality of life.

The 1:1 randomised, controlled multinational TACTI-003 trial is currently accruing patients at over 25 centers in the United States, Australia, and Europe, and is expected to be fully recruited by mid-2023.

“As clinical evidence showing the compelling benefits of combining efti with immune checkpoint therapies such as pembrolizumab continues to grow, we are increasingly excited about efti’s potential to safely deliver superior clinical outcomes and meaningfully expand the population of cancer patients that respond to treatment,” said Marc Voigt, CEO of Immutep.