Validation for microbiomes

With the first ever FDA approval for a faecal microbiome drug the door has been opened for other microbiome approaches to follow. Yet the profile of Ferring Pharmaceuticals’ Rebyota leaves plenty of room for improvement by competitor products, such as Destiny’s NTCD-M3. If nothing else, with Destiny’s stated aim being a licensing deal for NTCD-M3, the FDA approval of Rebyota and the comparison with M3 should motivate its potential partners even more.

After the FDA’s approval of Ferring Pharma’s Rebyota (fecal microbiota, live-jslm) the stage has been set for a new era of microbiome drug approvals. In many respects Rebyota has set a low bar for the competitor products that come after it, such as Destiny’s non-toxigenic Clostridioides difficile strain M3 (NTCD-M3).

Our valuation remains unchanged: we ascribe a fair value to Destiny Pharma of £251.2m or 345p per share.