This Cancer Vaccine Prospect Just Received a Buy Rating

Based on their belief that Los Angeles-based ImmunoCellular Therapeutics (IMUC) has the potential to create a new cancer vaccine, the Maxim Group began their coverage of the company this morning with a Buy Rating and an $18 price target.

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ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, a development-stage company, seeks a treatment to fight cancer that would use a patient’s own immune system.  If successful, Maxim Group, thinks the drug could become a billion-dollar product.

Currently the drug, ICT-107, has entered Phase II clinical trials, treating 20 patients with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain cancer.  Depending on how the trials progress, results could be available sometime in the late second half of 2013.

Maxim Group says ImmunoCellular’s ICT-107 could address perceived shortfalls of Dendreon‘s (NASDAQ:DNDN) prostate cancer treatment Provenge, who stock was recently downgraded by J.P. Morgan.  Increasing competition and low earnings have pushed the stock from $17.04 in early February to now less than $5.

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