Is Vaxart One to Watch...Maybe?

Vaxart is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company that seems to hold a great deal of promise. They are developing several oral tablet vaccines with the most promising being a vaccine for seasonal influenza. As noted on the company's website, the global vaccine market is worth $30 billion and a room temperature stable tablet has the potential to be a game changer.

Vaxart has scored some recent successes. On 4/20/18 Vaxart announced http://investors.vaxart.com/news-releases/news-release-details/vaxart-an... that they had received a milestone payment from partner Daiichi Sankyo for sales of Inavir in Japan. Inavir ((laninamivir octanoate) is a single dosed product for treating or preventing influenza. Vaxart reports that it is the leading treatment for influenza in Japan.

On 1/31/18 Vaxart announced results from a phase II challenge study of its oral tablet H1 influenza vaccine. The results were very positive with the tablet vaccine outperforming the market leading quadrivalent injection based vaccine and placebo. Who wouldn't prefer to swallow a tablet that even works better than an injection? The press release can be found on a number of sites, such as NASDAQ. However, though the headline is still available on Vaxart's site, the body of the press release is not available on Vaxart's site as of this writing.

Given the vast potential of tablet based vaccines, particularly those that are room-temperature stable and outperform injections, we wanted to know more about the company. We contacted them for an interview, but we have yet to hear any response. We also used the contact form accessible from Vaxart's investor section to ask investment related questions of their investor relations person. Again we have received no response.

Among the questions we wanted to ask were:

• Does Vaxart anticipate needing to raise more money to see the tablet flu vaccine through to approval? If so, have any plans been finalized for raising the additional funds?
• It looks like R&D spending is somewhat low -  are development plans on hold?
• How will the cost of the tablet vaccine compare to injectable vaccines?
• What are the current plans for manufacturing and promoting the tablet influenza vaccine?

Of course the lack of response may simply be related to the fact that Vaxart is a relatively small company that is involved with demanding research to bring a game-changing product to the marketplace. However, we also wonder if they are in “stealth mode” for some reason. Could they be in talks related to being acquired? That is pure speculation on our part, but the combination of a company with a product that holds such immense potential in the market place and has a market cap of just over $19 million begs the question – why haven't they been acquired already?

On February 13 2018, Vaxart announced the completion of its merger with Aviragen Therapeutics. Aviragen changed its name to Vaxart and effected a 1-for-11 reverse stock split. The combined company began trading on NASDAQ on February 14, 2018 under the symbol VXRT.