SSMMTSummit Therapeutics Inc.

Summit Therapeutics is testing a lung cancer drug whose rights were bought from a Chinese developer.

The molecule acts on two targets at once, combining the mechanisms of two drug classes in one. In trials run in China it outperformed the current standard of care — a result that, if confirmed in international studies, changes oncology practice.

That is precisely where the whole question lies: regulators elsewhere treat data from a single country cautiously, and confirmatory studies take years. The company has neither revenue nor an approved drug, and its valuation entirely reflects the probability of success. The risk is binary: confirmation and failure move the value several times over. Funding comes from share issuance.