Just two years ago, the Nobel prize in Chemistry was awarded for gene-editing technologycalled CRISPR/Cas9, which allowed precise gene editing of organisms using a biological scissor to cut out unwanted genes and insert the desired gene. CRISPR-focused companies including CRISPR Therapeutics, Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA), Editas Medicine (EDIT), and BeamTherapeutics (BEAM) jumped on the news with strong volume. CRISPR Therapeutics in particular was co-founded by one of the Nobel winners, Emmanuelle Charpentier. Over the ensuingmonths following this news, each of these four stocks, already worth hundreds of millions or billions, more than doubled, with NTLA and BEAM quadrupling. It appears that having Nobel prizetechnology means hundreds of millions or billions in market capitalization.
This is a pattern investors can follow for both strong short-term gains as well as for investing insolid long-term companies that can have a great impact on human health as their expertawarded scientific discoveries make their way into the business world.
The difficulty is identifying stocks related to the Nobel prize. For instance, in 2021, the Chemistry prize was given to Benjamin List and David MacMillan for their development of a precise newtool for molecular construction: organocatalysis, which can enhance pharmaceutical researchand make manufacturing cleaner. However, there were seemingly no stocks this directly impacted, certainly not ones whose businesses relied on these discoveries.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Its Corresponding Stock
Just last month on October 5th, the Nobel prize was awarded to Carolyn R. Bertozzi, MortenMeldal, and K. Barry Sharpless for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry. In essence, this discovery allows the tracking of sugars through cells in the lab so that researchers can figure out the pathways of sugars (as opposed to just proteins) in biology. Sugars(glycoproteins and glycolipids) have been somewhat of an enigma until recent years despitethese carbohydrates playing a very important role in biology. Stunning videos like this video of T-Cells killing cancer cells would not have been possible without the work of Nobel LaureateBertozzi.
Despite finding no 2021 Chemistry Nobel prize stock, there appears to be a company that hasanchored discoveries similar to the 2022 Chemistry Nobel prize. This relatively unknown biotechnology company is called Bioxytran, Inc (OTCMKTS: BIXT), which despite trading on theOTC is relatively well-capitalized and has a seasoned management team. The thing that makesBIXT so exciting is that this company is just a microcap with a market cap below $100 million.The company is relatively undiscovered and the float is very tight so a wave of new investors interested in capitalizing off two Nobel prize discoveries could move the stock a lot more than the well-known, multibillion-dollar CRISPR companies, as exciting as gene editing is. BIXT has two key assets that are in some ways more exciting than gene editing. The first is a glyco biology asset that impacts biological carbohydrate pathways, and the second is a unique oxygenation platform that has massive potential; indeed, the 2019 Nobel prize in Physiology was awarded for the discovery of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability. This makes two primary, promising assets that target Nobel prize science. When investors realize that the $60 million market cap BIXT has two technologies that are likely even more impactful than the billion-dollarCRISPR companies like Intellia, the stock could go parabolic.
Bioxytran, Nobel Prizes, and Cutting Edge Science
How does a small biotech company like BIXT have such impactful assets compared to these early-stage biotech companies which are Wall Street darlings? It comes down to such cutting edge science that hasn’t become well-known yet. Bioxtran’s lead drug candidate is a galectin inhibitor called Prolectin-M and although it may bind galectins, it also primarily functions as aCOVID-19 antiviral. Research has shown that viruses, including COVID-19, have a conserved, immutable “galectin fold”, which is a section of one of their proteins that mimics the structure ofa galectin. These galectin fold regions are critical to cell entry so blocking them with carbohydrate molecules interferes with their attachment to cells while rendering them neutralized, similarly to how neutralizing antibodies produced by the immune system can neutralize the virus, preventing it from infecting cells and then replicating. In early studies, Prolectin-M was able to eliminate the virus from COVID patients in a mere 3 days.
While the data is indeed early, Prolectin-M’s preliminary data and safety profile suggest that it could be a more efficacious COVID therapeutic than Pfizer’s (NYSE: PFE) Paxlovid, which is a3CL protease inhibitor, when comparing both in clinical trials and real-world data. Paxlovid(nirmatrelvir/ritonavir) is the best available COVID antiviral which is used in the outpatient setting to help prevent people from becoming hospitalized, and the consensus is that its efficacy is greater than other top antivirals like Lagevrio (molnupiravir, an RdRp inhibitor sold by Merck(NYSE: MRK)) and Veklury (remdesivir, an RdRp inhibitor sold by Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD)). Investors expect Prolectin-M to soon enter a pivotal phase 2/3 trial.
Paxlovid was projected to do over $30 billion in sales before falling over time. Regardless, this kind of market size is so enormous to a $60 million company like BioXyTran that the falling revenue for Pfizer isn’t a concern, it’s only an opportunity to gain market share as COVID becomes endemic.Beyond COVID: Influenza and MoreCOVID-19 isn’t the only virus with a galectin fold that is able to be targeted by Bioxytran’s proprietary glycovirology platform. Many other diseases such as monkeypox and influenza can be targeted by their carbohydrate drugs. In fact, Dr. Platt has used a new method to specifically design specialty complex carbohydrate drugs that can bind multiple, specific galectins (or corresponding galectin folds) via an innovative NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectros copy method. With further testing, single-molecule multi targeting different key galectins or even other glycoproteins has the potential to be more efficacious than one target alone. This approach also ensures better translation from drug discovery to efficacy in the lab and clinic.
