Bellerophon Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:BLPH): What's Behind The Run?

Bellerophon Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:BLPH) is a real runner this week, with the company currently trading around $1.50 a share – a close to 40% gain on its weekly open and a more than 65% premium on last week's mid week pricing. At first glance, however, there doesn’t seem to be too much driving the stock.There hasn’t been any real news put forward from either the company or any associated analysts, and other than a couple of 13G/As that filed last week, nothing of note has hit the SEC since an early January 8K.So what's happening?Well, it looks as though the company is running up on some speculative loading. There are a few ways to look at this, and one is that someone, somewhere knows something that wider markets don't. It's a speculative suggestion, of course, but one we've made on a number of occasions here at Insider Financial in almost identical scenarios, and one that – most importantly – has paid off on a high proportion of said occasions.So, if there's someone with an inside line on a catalyst, what might the catalyst be?For those new to this one, Bellerophon is a development stage biotechnology company that is developing treatments targeting cardiopulmonary diseases. Its lead program, and the one that we seeing as being the primary value driver over the coming few years, is called INOpulse, and it is currently developing three product candidates under this program.The first candidate is for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), for which is currently in a phase III study, and is one we'll look at in some more detail shortly. The second is for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (PH-COPD) and the third candidate is for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension associated with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (PH-IPF). These latter two are in phase II studies at time of writing.So, the phase III asset, Bellerephon addressed in its latest press release (latest, but not particularly recent – dated January 4). Basically, the company wanted to make some modifications to the study that would see two planned studies merge into one study with an expansion study tacked on to it. The FDA agreed to the alterations, and it was this agreement that the company reported in the PR.At the time, markets didn’t really respond to this news, and the strength we are seeing as late may be in part a hangover of this non-response. The modifications bring the potential approval of the drug forward from 2022 to 2020, and give us a whole host of what we might refer to as expedited catalysts over the coming 24 months. Basically, markets should have traded up on the announcement at the turn of the year. They didn’t, so we might be seeing some strength now as a sort of rebalancing of sentiment.That, or as mentioned, someone is buying ahead of a catalyst. What could the catalyst be? Well, there are plenty of potential candidates across the coming twelve months. The two above mentioned phase IIs are set to read out before the end of the year, and there's every chance we'll see an interim update from one or both over the next couple of quarters. Both have the potential to target markets worth high double digit million dollars at release, and as such, a positive phase II readout (and in turn, the putting forward of a phase III protocol) could inject some serious upside momentum into what we see as a seriously beaten down stock.There are lawsuits circling, headed up by the usual ambulance chasing firms looking to capitalize on shareholders' response to this company's performance since IPO, but we're not taking them too seriously as risk factors for Bellerephon going forward.We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on BLPH, sign up below!Disclosure: We have no position in BLPH and have not been compensated for this article.