APRE - Aprea Therapeutics surges on heavy volume; Wedbush initiates at outperform $3 PT

Shares of micro-cap biotech Aprea Therapeutics ( NASDAQ: APRE ) jumped as much as 32.5% to $1.06 on heavy volume in Friday morning trade, amidst mixed broader markets.

Over 20.7M shares of APRE had changed hands as of 1058 ET, well above the stock's 3-month average volume of ~455K shares.

On Thursday too, the stock saw heavy volume, with around 4.5M shares changing hands. It ended 3.6% lower at $0.80.

Helping APRE's surge on Friday was Wedbush research initiating the Boston, Mass.-based company with an outperform rating. Analyst Robert Driscoll gave the stock a price target of $3, which is nearly triple APRE's last closing price of $0.80.

Aprea is developing cancer therapies that target DNA damage response (DDR) pathways. The DNA in our cells are subjected to stress everyday, which can lead to damage. Cells have mechanisms to detect and, if possible, repair this damage. Mutations in these pathways can lead to cancer.

"APRE has re-focused its pipeline through the recent acquisition of Atrin Pharmaceuticals (private) to target DNA damage response (DDR) checkpoint kinases ATR and WEE1," said Driscoll.

Aprea announced the acquisition of privately-held Atrin in mid-May. Atrin is a biotech focused on the discovery and development of therapies targeting proteins in the DDR pathway.

"We see a large number of opportunities for modulating DDR kinases broadly in cancers, with clinically validated synthetic lethality-based monotherapy, and combination approaches with PARP inhibitors, chemotherapies, and IO agents," Driscoll added.

APRE went public in late 2019. It had pared some of its gains and was last trading 11.3% higher .

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