Australian stocks failed to build on yesterday’s gain with the ASX200 closing nearly unchanged with a 2.4 point gain to 5,664.7.
Energy stocks were amongst the biggest gainers with the Energy Index rising 1.9% to 11,603.6 points.
Oil Search (ASX:OSH) rose 2.4% to $7.57, Santos (ASX:STO) gained 2.3% to $8.09 and Woodside Petroleum (ASX:WPL) climbed 1.5% to $34.84.
Market Action here…
Imugene Limited (ASX:IMU) drew investors with its shares climbing 9.1% to $0.012 with almost 107.9 million shares traded.
This follows its research that demonstrated promising inhibition of tumour cells by its Her-Vaxx peptide vaccine for HER-2 positive gastric and breast cancer compared with Roche’s Herceptin drug in tumour model.
In empirical work, pre-clinical data showed that a higher dose of HER-Vaxx is able to inhibit cancer cell growth 70% greater than Herceptin.
While clinical trials are required to confirm this, the result is promising given that Herceptin generated annualised sales of $6.9 billion.
The Phase 1b/2 clinical trial remains on track to begin in the second half of 2015.
Phase 1b is designed to confirm low toxicity and select the optimal dose from three different doses of HER-Vaxx while Phase 2 will use the dose identified in Phase 1b and assess clinical efficacy of HER-Vaxx in two groups of 34 patients in a placebo-controlled trial design.
This trial will improve understand of HER-Vaxx’s functioning from an early stage including showing the increased modulation of the immune system and demonstrating again the production of HER-2 antibodies by patients’ immune systems
Adding interest, the trial will use a re-formulation of Her-Vaxx that shows more rapid and greater anti-cancer antibody production.
Redflow (ASX:RFX) is up 12.8% to $0.265, Charter Pacific (ASX:CHF) jumped 55.6% to $0.042, Argonaut Resources (ASX:ARE) climbed 16.7% to $0.007 while Legend Mining (ASX:LEG) is up 14.3% to $0.008 with almost 4 million shares traded.
Metals of Africa (ASX:MTA) rose 10.8% to $0.072, Phoenix Copper (ASX:PNX) climbed 16.7% to $0.021 and Botswana Metals (ASX:BML) is up 16.7% to $0.007 with about 1.3 million shares traded.
Blue Chip Stocks
Major Miners
BHP Billiton (ASX:BHP) crept up 0.03% to $29.25
Fortescue Metals Group (ASX:FMG) fell 0.5% to $2.11
Newcrest (ASX:NCM) rose 2.3% to $14.31
Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) slipped 0.3% to $56.75
Big 4 banks
ANZ Bank (ASX:ANZ) dropped 0.5% to $32.05
Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA) fell 0.5% to $83.11
National Australia Bank (ASX:NAB) is down 0.5% to $33.23
Westpac (ASX:WBC) down 0.3% to $32.56
Other banks, financials and industrials
AMP (ASX:AMP) fell 0.6% to $6.40
Bank of Queensland (ASX:BOQ) up 0.3% to $13.05
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank (ASX:BEN) rose 0.6% to $12.16
Macquarie Group (ASX:MQG) dipped 0.1% to $79.64
Suncorp (ASX:SUN) up 0.2% to $13.12
Telstra (ASX:TLS) up 0.3% to $6.20
Retailers
JB Hi-FI (ASX:JBH) dropped 0.8% to $21.18
Wesfarmers (ASX:WES) slipped 0.1% to $43.33
Woolworths (ASX:WOW) down 0.6% to $28.18
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