After Neoprobe (NYSE Amex:NEOP) sold off its top revenue-producing asset (along with its name) to transform itself into a pure-play radiopharmaceutical company, it had to find itself a new brand.
Now, the company is on the verge of announcing that brand, CEO Mark Pykett said in the Dublin, Ohio company’s third-quarter earnings release.
“In the coming weeks, we expect to announce our new brand identity, which we hope will mark a formal turning point in the recognition of Neoprobe as a precision diagnostics company focused on the radiopharmaceutical space,” Pykett said.
The company’s new identity has been hotly anticipated by … well, probably very few people who don’t work for Neoprobe, but it was the only thing that could pass as news in Neoprobe’s earnings announcement.
With Neoprobe, the financials are never the news, and even less so now that it’s divested its radiation detection business.
The big moment for Neoprobe is expected to come next summer, when it could receive FDA approval of its radiopharmaceutical Lymphoseek. The drug is a targeting agent used by surgeons to identify lymph nodes in patients with breast cancer or melanoma and to indicate whether cancer has spread to a particular lymph node.
Approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would open to Neoprobe what the company has said is a $450 million market — and make it a more attractive acquisition candidate to a bigger company, such as its long-rumored suitor Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH).
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Cardinal is handling U.S. distribution and sales and marketing of Lymphoseek.
