HC Wainwright & Co. analyst Emily Bodnar has maintained a Buy rating on Agenus and increased the price target to $30 from $23. The revised target reflects increased confidence in the company's prospects.

Rating and Price Target Details

The firm's decision to upgrade the price target comes as Agenus continues to develop its pipeline. The previous target of $23 has been replaced by the new $30 objective.

Agenus is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol AGEN.

Agenus Inc. announced three-year Phase 1b data from the fully enrolled C-800-01 cohort evaluating botensilimab (BOT) plus balstilimab (BAL) in patients with refractory microsatellite-stable (MSS) metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) without active liver metastases. The data were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Gastrointestinal Cancers (ESMO GI) Congress 2026 on July 2 in Munich, Germany. The combination demonstrated clinically meaningful long-term survival in a heavily pretreated population where durable long-term survival is rarely reported.

BOT+BAL showed a median overall survival of 21.2 months and a three-year overall survival rate of 33%, with the Kaplan-Meier curve indicating a plateau beyond two years. Available later-line standards in this setting have historically reported median overall survival of approximately 10–14 months. The dataset includes 26 confirmed responses, with a median duration of response not reached. Additionally, 21 patients, or 17%, were alive and off all systemic anticancer therapy at last follow-up, including 13 responders.

Key Efficacy Results

The Phase 1b cohort included 123 patients who had received a median of three prior lines of therapy. Key efficacy outcomes from the study are detailed below:

In a post hoc late-line–exposed subgroup of 37 patients who had received at least one prior regimen of regorafenib, trifluridine/tipiracil with or without bevacizumab, or fruquintinib, BOT+BAL showed a confirmed objective response rate of 22% and a median overall survival of 16.2 months. The three-year overall survival rate in this subgroup was 30%.

Safety Profile

Extended safety follow-up showed no new safety signals and no treatment-related deaths. Immune-mediated diarrhea/colitis, the most common immune-mediated adverse event, resolved in 98% of affected patients with a median time to resolution of 14 days. The selected Phase 3 regimen of BOT 1 mg/kg plus BAL demonstrated improved tolerability, with lower rates of immune-mediated diarrhea/colitis compared to the 2 mg/kg regimen.

"These three-year data are important because they show a pattern of benefit that is not typically expected in refractory MSS colorectal cancer," said Benjamin L. Schlechter, M.D., of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and presenting author of the study. "Seeing a subset of patients remain alive and off systemic anticancer therapy after treatment speaks to the clinical relevance of these results."

The findings support continued evaluation of BOT+BAL in MSS mCRC and provide rationale for the ongoing randomized Phase 3 BATTMAN trial. The C-800-01 study is a first-in-human Phase 1b clinical trial evaluating botensilimab with or without balstilimab in patients with advanced solid tumors.