The FDA put an end to JUNO’s charade yesterday, ordering them to stop trials, following the death of 2 people. As such, shares of JUNO are being demolitioned. The other prominent car-t play out there is KITE. That stock is down too, but well off the lows, after analyst’s converged to circle jerk around their shares.
Via Briefing.com
If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on TwitterJP Morgan downgraded JUNO to Neutral from Overweight following the clinical hold placed on the company’s CAR-T candidate, JCAR015. Firm still has high hopes for the platform, but as of the moment, sees better opportunities elsewhere in the CAR-T space.
FBR Capital lowered their JUNO tgt to $61 from $73, due to the delay in timelines for JCAR015, noting they expect to hear additional details regarding the ongoing trial and updated timelines during the company’s 2Q16 earnings call in August. They remind that in the Phase I study conducted with JCAR015 that included approximately 10 patients pre-treated with Flu/Cy and 40 patients with Cy alone, a complete remission was reported in 82% of the patients and a complete molecular remission (CmR) was achieved in 66% of the patients.
Mizuho says they would be buyers of KITE on weakness. The firm notes that the clinical hold placed on JUNO’s trial in adult ALL highlights the well-known safety risks of CAR T cell therapy development. However, firm notes KITE’s trials are unaffected and continue to progress, and they would be buyers on weakness. They see several 2H catalysts for KITE: data from the pivotal ZUMA-1 trial in 2H16; an Investor Day in October should shed more light on the commercialization strategy – a vital piece of the puzzle given the novelty of the therapy, and an FDA filing by YE to be first to market in DLBCL. Maintains Buy & $80 tgt.
RBC Capital Mkts is at Outperform on KITE noting it does appear to them that the key primary difference between the JCAR15 clinical trial and KITE ZUMA-1 trial is JUNO’s use of a high-dose chemo (~3x higher) vs low-dose conditioning for KITE. This is important because NCI studies were using both high-dose and low-dose, and KITE determined that high-dose did not impact or improve efficacy. Therefore KITE learned from that (ASCO data) and has been using the low-dose regimen in all of their studies. Originally, JUNO was using cylcophosphamide only and then later added fludarabine to match the other programs using that, including JCAR14 (41BB).
