Wall Street is optimistic that Olema Pharmaceuticals could be developing the next big breakthrough in breast cancer treatment.
Earlier this month, the company announced promising clinical data for its lead candidate palazestrant, an oral drug that is being evaluated in several trials for estrogen receptor-positive, or ER+, breast cancer.
Shares of the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company are up about 50% this year and more than 70% in the past three months. Analysts surveyed by FactSet see many advantages for Olema. Its average price target of $23.71 per share suggests the stock could soar about 164% from its last closing price.
Olema was included in CNBC's recent selection of San Francisco-based companies, with market capitalizations under $500 million, that have captured market interest.
Olema stock performance over the past year.
Investors are bullish on palazestrant ahead of a primary readout from a key clinical trial expected in the second half of 2026. Those results could lead to a filing with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and subsequent commercialization of the therapy.
“You just have to look at our data. The best way to predict how a drug will work, or how a combination of drugs will work, is to look at the data produced with that drug or that combination,” Olema CEO Sean Bohen said on CNBC's “Power Lunch.” “I think so [investors] “Take the time to sit back and look at that, and you'll see there's a reason for the optimism that analysts have and certainly for our researchers and patients.”
Palazestrant is part of the same therapeutic family as tamoxifen, another therapy targeting estrogen receptors that was approved in 1997. However, Olema's drug does not have an agonist effect, meaning it does not cause a physiological response anywhere else in the body. Fulvestrant, another therapy in the family, also works to eliminate breast cancer, but has clear limitations since it is injected, rather than taken orally like palazestrant.
Palazestrant is uniquely designed to deactivate the estrogen receptor “all the time and completely…and therefore slow the progression of tumor growth and keep the disease stable longer,” Bohen said.
“We're focusing on the vast majority of patients who are diagnosed with breast cancer, which is the estrogen receptor-positive or two-negative population, or about 70%,” he said. “We're taking one of the oldest validated molecular targets in cancer, the estrogen receptor… and what we're doing is improving the focus on that particular driver of breast cancer growth and proliferation to provide better therapy for breast cancer patients.”
Bohen explained that there have been other attempts to improve this, which haven't really solved the problem. “So that's what we're trying to do,” he said.
