Shares of Victor Li’s CK Life more than double to a multi-year high after favourable clinical trial on drug used for treating skin cancer

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The drug, being developed by CK Life’s unit Polynoma, could be the first vaccine-based immunotherapy for stage-two sufferers of melanoma if it meets US Food and Drug Administration requirements on further trial work

CK Life’s shares more than doubled to a 53-month high of HK$0.90, with 433 million shares changing hands, more than 110 times their daily average transactions

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CK Hutchison’s founder Li Ka-shing (centre) and CK Life Sciences’ chairman Victor Li Tzar-kuoi (right) at the listing ceremony of the pharmaceutical and agriculture produce company’s shares in Hong Kong on 3 July, 2002. Photo: SCMP

Eric Ng

Published: 6:36pm, 6 Nov 2019Updated: 9:12am, 7 Nov 2019

Shares of CK Life Sciences International Holdings, the health care and agriculture produce unit of tycoon Victor Li Tzar-kuoi’s conglomerate CK Hutchison, more than doubled after it announced that its drug for treating early-stage skin cancer has yielded favourable interim clinical trial results.

The drug, being developed by CK Life’s California-based subsidiary Polynoma, could potentially be the first vaccine-based immunotherapy for stage-two sufferers of melanoma - the most severe and deadly form of skin cancer - if it meets US Food and Drug Administration requirements on further trial work.

“Our drug candidate, targeting stage two B and C patients, has been shown to significantly increase the recurrence-free survival likelihood of patients in our trial,” CK Life’s chief scientific officer Melvin Toh Kean-meng said. “We are not aware of another company’s vaccine immunotherapy candidate entering phase three trial.”

CK Life shares more than doubled to a 53-month high of HK$0.90, after jumping to an intraday high of HK$0.91, with as many as 433 million shares changing hands, or 110 times their average daily transactions in the past year.

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“Given the ultra-strong turnover and the fact that the shares closed at near the intraday high, I expect further speculative buying to easily push the stock above HK$1 tomorrow,” said VC Asset Management managing director Louis Tse Ming-kwong. “I wouldn’t be surprised that the stock sees a 10 per cent correction ... while it is difficult to estimate how much additional value the interim clinical results may bring, the temptation to speculate on the stock is high.”

The market for treating skin cancer is a multibillion industry. In the US alone, 96,000 new cases of melanoma - skin cancer that primarily afflicts people with fair skin after severe exposure to ultraviolet light - are expected this year, resulting possibly in 7,000 deaths, according to CK Life’s chief operating officer Alan Yu Ying-choi.