Check up: A good fortnight to be a small cap health investor

Here’s our fortnightly wrap of all the news driving ASX health stocks.

Of the ASX’s 133-odd small cap health stocks and of those which were trading on Wednesday, 90 were in positive territory over the last fortnight, 13 were flat and 33 saw their share prices fall.

While the numbers weren’t high — let’s face it, small caps are capable of much more than a piddly 67 per cent rise in a fortnight — there were a lot of them in positive territory.

Not only have the health and life sciences players been delivering good news generally, but they’re also proving to be a good source of annual results.

But this fortnight, there’s been little rhyme or reason for the large scale upwards moves except that people are buying life sciences stocks.

Factor Therapeutics (ASX:FTT) investors were still buzzing about the company’s transformation into an animal imaging outfit, after that clinical trial which led to a near wipe out of the company’s value.

And clearly news leaked before Neurotech International (ASX:NTI) was able to go into a trading halt. It is still in the process of working out what to tell the ASX and how to release results of lab testing of its cannabis strains.

Imagion Biosystems (ASX:IBX) was all innocence last week when asked why its stock was rising so fast. One theory could be latecomers discovering the Imagion-tesla link.

While other companies may prefer to stay mum on why their stock is moving, BPH Energy (ASX:BPH) is one entity that always has an answer.

In this case the company claimed it was the non-life sciences arm doing the heavy lifting: “BPH notes that the National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator (NOPTA) has confirmed on its website that the application currently made by the Joint Venture Participants BUY and BPH for a suspension, variation and extension to the permit terms for PEP11 is in the final phase of decision process and is now with the Joint Authority for decision.”

With a bird flu outbreak underway in Victoria (factory farmed chickens aren’t great at social distancing), Anatara Lifesciences (ASX:ANR) was looking for partners to trial its necrotic enteritis, or chicken gastro, treatment.

It has since done a deal with the University of New England’s Poultry Hub Australia.

Coming in at #13 in the Check Up rankings is Pharmaxis (ASX:PXS), which actually had news that investors could (and were) buying into.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) completed a safety review of the company’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application for its pan‐LOX inhibitor PXS‐5505 and gave permission to proceed with a phase 1/2 clinical trial for treating myelofibrosis in adults.

The study is planned to start in the December quarter and expected to conclude in 2022.

And finally sperm separator Memphasys (ASX:MEM) has done a collaboration with Newcastle University to develop new products in niche reproductive biology applications.

With the Felix device on track for commercialisation later this year, Memphasys is now looking to extend its pipeline of products into diagnostics for animal fertility and semen oxidative stress, and development of long life sperm storage media.