What happened Shares of the German cancer immunotherapy company Affimed (NASDAQ: AFMD) jumped by as much as 25% in premarket trading Monday morning. The biotech's stock is popping in early morning action today in response to overwhelmingly positive early-stage trial results for its lead product candidate, AFM13. Specifically, Affimed announced that an investigator-initiated phase 1/2 trial evaluating AFM13 in combination with cord blood-derived allogeneic natural killer cells produced a 100% objective response rate in patients with recurrent or refractory CD30-positive lymphomas at the recommended phase 2 dose and after a single treatment cycle. Equally important, the company noted that there were no reports of serious adverse events such as cytokine release syndrome, immune cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome, or graft-versus-host disease. Image source: Getty Images. So what Although investors shouldn't draw any firm conclusions from a small, early-stage trial, these preliminary data are eye-catching nonetheless. What's important to understand is that these were heavily pre-treated patients who had progressive disease after their latest line of therapy. That's a tough setting, to put it mildly. And that's what makes this perfect objective response rate at the recommended phase 2 dose all the more impressive. Now what Affimed said it will host a conference call on Dec. 9 at 8:30 a.m. ET to discuss these initial results, as well as the study's next steps. In the interim, aggressive investors might want to consider buying shares of this small-cap biotech. Apart from its handsome organic growth prospects, Affimed stands out as a strong buyout candidate, especially after today's clinical update. Several big pharmas, after all, have shown a keen interest in acquiring early-stage cancer companies with assets that could eventually evolve into franchise-level products. 10 stocks we like better than Affimed TherapeuticsWhen our award-winning analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* They just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Affimed Therapeutics wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. See the 10 stocks *Stock Advisor returns as of November 10, 2021 George Budwell has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.Source