Celsion Corporation (NASDAQ:CLSN) Finally Turns Around, What's Next?

Back in February, as part of this coverage, we asked the question – is now the right time to catch the Celsion Corporation (NASDAQ:CLSN) knife? At the time, the company was trading for a little less than $0.22 a share.Since then, management has effected a reverse split to the tune of one for fourteen. As such, the company is trading for a per share price that's considerably higher right now than when we asked the question. This rise, of course, means nothing – it's nothing but a symptom of the stock consolidation.This doesn’t mean we weren't right, however.This week, the company put out an update as to the progress of its lead ovarian cancer asset and a heavy injection of volume on the back of the update has translated to a close to 40% run on the news.Turns out, then, that our highlighting of Celsion last quarter may well have marked the bottom of a long decline in the company's fortunes and – by proxy – the start of a longer-term upside revaluation.Here's what the latest update says about the drug in question and what it means for the company going forward.For those new to this one, Celsion is developing two assets – one called ThermoDox, which is targeting primary liver cancer and chest wall breast cancer, and another called GEN-1, which is under development in patients with advanced ovarian cancer. While the former is far more advanced (it's in ongoing phase III and phase II trials respectively for the above-noted indications), it's the latter that we're interested in here.The drug is an immunotherapy asset and it's rooted in a cytokine called IL-12. Basically, it is designed to insert a gene vector into a cancer cell that codes for the IL-12 cytokine. This causes the cancerous cells to secrete the cytokine, which allows the immune system to recognize the cells in question as cancerous. Once recognized, the immune system gets to work attacking the cells.That's the theory and the latest data suggests it's a valid one. It's a small trial, with only fourteen patients dosed, but these patients, two demonstrated a complete response, ten a partial response, and two remained stable. As the company noted in the press release tied to the update, this translates to a 100% disease control rate and an 86% objective response rate – two gold standard efficacy reference points in this sort of tough to treat oncologic indication.Sure, these are early stage numbers, but they are strong, and it's this strength that's driving the company's revaluation right now.So what's next?The thing to remember here is that this is a secondary program and it's the lead, the ThermoDox platform, that's going to determine a base valuation for this company throughout the latter half of 2017. The catalysts from this program are few and far between, however, so the injection of volume that a secondary update brings (as is exactly what we’ve seen here) is a more than welcome spark to get the stock moving.We now want the company to build from its current position to ensure that this upside momentum continues, and there's no immediately obvious reason why it can't do just that. The split brought it in line with exchange rules and the recent run has helped it to maintain the post-split pricing (for the majority, at least).The primary risk here is cash burn. Management noted on its most recent call that it expects to burn around $4 million a quarter through late 2018. A $5 million raise early first quarter left around $3.1 million on hand at March 31, so we're almost certainly going to get a raise before the end of this month (and very latest early next). The size of the raise will determine the frequency of those that follow over the coming twelve months. While it's probably going to serve up some near term sentiment weakness, we'd probably rather see management $10-15 million and fund operations through early 2018 than raise $4 million try to tack together operational capital by way of once-quarterly equity issues.We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on CLSN, sign up below!Disclosure: We have no position in CLSN and have not been compensated for this article.