Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. (PTGX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company yesterday before the market opened announced a worldwide agreement with Janssen Biotech Inc.

The agreement with Janssen was to co-develop and commercialize PTG-200 for inflammatory bowel disease. The agreement pays Protagonist $50 million in upfront payment and the possibility of an additional $940 million in development and sales milestones.    

Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. CEO’s  Comments

“We are very pleased to partner with Janssen, a world-leader in the development of innovative therapies for patients suffering with chronic inflammatory and immunomodulatory diseases. As an oral IL-23 receptor antagonist, PTG-200 nicely complements Janssen’s current IBD portfolio,” said Dinesh V. Patel, Ph.D., Protagonist’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “The funding provided by this transaction enables us to advance our platform and clinical pipeline of innovative peptide drugs, including our lead oral peptide alpha-4-beta-7 integrin antagonist, PTG-100, which is currently in a Phase 2b clinical trial as a potential treatment for ulcerative colitis.”  PR Newswire

PTGX Technical Analysis

(Click on image to enlarge)

PTGX opened trading yesterday at $12.28 which was up from the previous day’s trading close of $9.22, equivalent to a 49% increase. PTGX closed trading yesterday at $11.82. Taking a look at the daily chart we can see the last time PTGX traded above these levels we have to go back to April 5th when it traded at $12.38.

Taking a closer look at the daily chart we can see that before the spike up PTGX had been in an overall downward trend dating back to December 5th, 2016 when it traded at $26.24. PTGX has a float of 7.03 million shares and traded 124.38 times the normal daily trading volume on Tuesday.