Fighting Back: 3 ASX cancer stocks giving hope in a leading cause of death

Prescient Thereapeutics gives hope with its personalised Car-T cell therapy
Imugene working to activate the immune systems of cancer suffers to fight disease
Rhythm Bioscience revolutionising the detection of bowel cancer

According to the World Health Organisation, cancer accounted for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020, or nearly one in six deaths.

Here are 3 small and mid-cap ASX cancer stocks working for better treatments and early detection of cancer.

1.Prescient Therapeutics leaders in CAR-T cell therapy

Clinical stage oncology company Prescient Therapeutics (ASX:PTX) develops novel, personalised therapies for a range of cancers.

Prescient’s universal CAR-T and targeted therapies seek to improve patient outcomes, whilst also offering new tools for clinicians in combating cancer.

Prescient Therapeutics is working to rapidly expand the application of universal CAR-T therapies, capable of addressing all cancer types, including solid tumours.

The company recently expanded patient recruitment for a trial into lead drug candidate, PTX-100, in the treatment of patients with T-cell lymphomas.

The decision to expand the trial followed excellent safety data and promising preliminary evidence of clinical efficiency.

The company has a market cap of ~$84.5 million. Its share price has risen 30% in the past year to 13 cents.

2.Imugene therapies aim to identity and eradicate tumors

Imugene (ASX:IMU) is a clinical stage immuno-oncology company developing new treatments that seek to activate the immune system of cancer patients to identify and eradicate tumors.

The company has novel technology platforms delivering immunotherapy including oncolytic virotherapies, onCARlytics in celluar therapy and B-Cell activating immunotherapies.

Imugene has several clinical trials underway, including a collaboration with global giants Pfizer and Merck for the Phase 2 trial of HER-Vaxx.

HER-Vaxx is a B-cell immuno-therapy to treat tumours over-expressing the HER-2/neu receptor, such as gastric, breast, ovarian, lung and pancreatic cancers.

Imugene is headed by Australia biotech veteran Paul Hopper and has a market cap of $1.34 billion. Its share price is up ~18% in the past year to 22 cents.

Rhythm Biosciences develops blood test to detect bowel cancer

Rhythm Biosciences (ASX:RHY) is working to replace invasive bowel cancer screening with a simple blood test.

Rhythm’s recently announced promising results from a clinical trial of its blood test product ColoSTAT exhibited very high accuracy for the detection of colorectal cancer.

The trial showed statistically significant performance, recording 81% sensitivity, and a specificity of 91%.

ColoSTAT was also shown to be 35% more accurate than the market standard Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) for detecting cancer and advanced adenomas.

ColoStat has a market cap of ~$300 million. Its share price is up ~25.% in the past year to $1.40.