Tenax Trading Volume Soars as Lone Bull Touts Heart Study Update

(Bloomberg) -- Tenax Therapeutics Inc. is seeing about five times its 20-day average in trading volume Thursday after Ladenburg Thalmann said it he was “encouraged” by the drug developer’s update this month on a study in patients with hard-to-treat pulmonary hypertension.

Shares of Tenax soared as much as 33 percent to $2.41 each before paring to 18 percent as of 12:29 p.m. in New York.

“We continue to be encouraged by the company’s progress and anticipate additional patient enrollment going forward,” said analyst Jeffrey Cohen at Ladenburg, which has the only buy rating on the stock in data compiled by Bloomberg. The firm’s price target is $9.25.

Tenax, whose market value has shrunk to about $14 million from more than $100 million in 2015 amid previous study failures, said on March 11 that the first patient had been enrolled in a mid-stage clinical trial, dubbed “HELP.” It’s designed to study levosimendan in patients with pulmonary hypertension and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.

The study plans to enroll 36 patients at 10-12 clinical research sites and the trial is expected to run for 6 weeks, with eligibility for further study over a two-year period, Cohen noted.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rebecca Choong Wilkins in New York at rchoongwilki@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Courtney Dentch at cdentch1@bloomberg.net, Jeremy R. Cooke

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