Is Anavex Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:AVXL) About To Announce Something Big?

Anavex Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:AVXL) has had a tough final couple of weeks of September. The company has been one of our most closely watched stocks over the past 12 months and, along the way, has been subject to a substantial amount of volatility.The stock's 52-week range comes in at $2.76 at the low-end and $6.30 at the high-end. Right now, Anavex trades towards the higher end of this range, at $4.54 a share. Just yesterday, however, the company traded at $3.80 apiece – pretty much bang on the midpoint of the 52-week range.The last 24 hours, therefore, have been something of a reprieve on the previous two weeks' worth of action. We haven't seen any fresh news hit the press and the company hasn't filed anything new with the SEC since this prospectus back on September 9, so what's driving the action? AVXL Daily ChartBefore speculating, let's quickly catch readers up that are new to this company.Anavex is a biotechnology stock that has spent the last few years trying to bring a drug called Anavex 2-73 to market. The asset is potentially revolutionary in a target indication that essentially has no effective treatment options, Alzheimer's disease, and while numerous trials have served up seemingly strong later, Anavex has suffered a degree of backlash from the sector as a whole and the news media analysts along the way.There is plenty of anecdotal evidence supporting an almost complete turnaround in patients – something that just doesn't happen in Alzheimer's disease. However, until the stock reaches mainstream consciousness, it's one of those biotechnology plays that is pretty much a slave to market makers and large players, meaning it can be a great stock to trade but a tough one to buy and hold.There is a pivotal trial set to kick off this year (if things go to plan) and when this trial initiates, we should finally start to see some degree of speculative attention flow towards the company and, in particular, Anavex 2-73.That's a catalyst, but there is something else that we are on the lookout for and it is this something else that we are going to build into our speculation as to what is happening right now and what is driving the stock to the upside.To put it bluntly, Anavex really needs a partner in order to complete the development of Anavex 2-73. Cash on hand as of June 30 was a little over $24 million, which is far from bad for a company that this in the market, but a pivotal phase 3 in Alzheimer's is a large-scale trial and there's a good chance that, at current burn, said cash balance won't carry the trail through to completion.There is already a big name in the fray, with Biogen Inc (NASDAQ:BIIB) signing a deal in September last year that will see it test Anavex 2-73 in an oligodendrocyte precursor cell (OPC) differentiation assay, with a view to potentially developing the drug in a multiple sclerosis indication.However, Anavex 2-73 in Alzheimer's is where the blockbuster potential lies and we want to see another name, board to help Anavex get over the line. The latest run, therefore, could be activity based on the fact that we are about to get the announcement we are looking for. We see this frequently in the smaller end of the biotechnology space, where companies run up ahead of big news being released. It shouldn’t be the case from a regulatory perspective, but it happens and here at Insider Financial, we've called exactly this sort of scenario on numerous occasions in the past.If we do see the type of announcement we are looking out for, Anavex will explode out of the gates this morning and should easily break the above-mentioned 52-week high resistance level.Check out our previous coverage of Anavex here. We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on AVXL, sign up below!Image courtesy of Joseph Elsbernd via FlickrDisclosure: We have no position in AVXL and have not been compensated for this article.