Breast cancer drug stock Olema could more than double from here, analysts say
Wall Street is optimistic about this Olema Pharmaceuticals may be developing the next big breakthrough breast cancer treatment.
The company announced earlier this month promising clinical data for lead candidate palazestrant, an oral drug being evaluated in several trials for estrogen receptor-positive, or ER+, breast cancer.
Shares of the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company are up nearly 50% this year and more than 70% in the past three months. Analysts polled by FactSet see a lot of positive developments ahead for Olema. The average price target of $23.71 per share suggests the stock could skyrocket nearly 164% from its last closing price.
Olema was recently included in CNBC’s list of San Francisco-based companies with a market capitalization under $500 million that are attracting market attention.
Olema’s stock performance last year.
Investors are optimistic about palazestrant ahead of primary results from a pivotal clinical trial expected in the second half of 2026. These results could potentially lead to a submission to the US Food and Drug Administration and subsequent commercialization of the treatment.
“Just look at our data. The best way to predict what a drug or a combination of drugs will do is to look at the data produced by that drug or that combination,” Olema CEO Sean Bohen said on CNBC’s “Power Lunch.” “I guess if [investors] “Take the time to sit down and look at this, and they’ll see that there’s a reason for the optimism of analysts, and certainly our researchers and patients.”
Palazestrant is part of the same therapeutic family as tamoxifen, another estrogen receptor-targeting therapy approved in 1997. But Olema’s drug has no agonist effect, meaning it does not cause a physiological response elsewhere in the body. Another therapy in the family, Fulvestrant, also works to eliminate breast cancer, but has distinct limitations because it is injected rather than taken orally like palazestrant.
Bohen said Palazestrant is uniquely designed to “always and completely turn off the estrogen receptor, thereby delaying the progression of tumor growth and keeping the disease stable for longer.”
“We focus on the vast majority, or about 70%, of patients diagnosed with breast cancer that are ER, estrogen receptor, positive, or bi-negative populations,” he said. “We’re taking the estrogen receptor, which is one of the earliest validated molecular targets in cancer… and what we’re doing is improving targeting that specific factor that causes breast cancer to grow and proliferate to provide better treatment for breast cancer patients.”
Bohen explained that other attempts have been made to improve this, but they have not fully solved the problem. “So that’s what we’re trying to do,” he said.
