Kite Pharma Inc Scores Big on Positive Clinical Trial (KITE)

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Kite Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:KITE) closed Monday at $54.98, marking an 11% decline for the year for KITE stock owners. Today, Kite is trading just shy of $60 a share, trimming its year-to-date loss to just 2.9%.

Kite Pharma Inc Scores Big on Positive Clinical TrialThe reason for the move is positive top-line data in its most recent clinical trial for its lymphoma treatment, showing roughly two-thirds of patients responded positively to Kite’s treatment, with 40% going into “complete remission.”

According to Jefferies analyst Biren Amin:

“We view the 3-month CR rate across the entire ZUMA-1 cohort as favorable and suggestive of a durable response … The ZUMA-1 study pre-defines duration of response as inclusive of all three pt cohorts, and therefore we think the trial should observe a >6 months duration of response which view as a key marker for regulatory approval”

Kite, in conjunction with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Inc., is championing its lead product, KTE-C19, for regulatory approval in the treatment of patients suffering from diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and other forms of the lymphoid cancer.

But KITE stock holders aren’t the only ones dancing in the streets — Juno Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:JUNO) is up 12% on today’s news, as Juno offers a similar lymphoma treatment, which came under pressure amid the deaths of two patients in the first half of 2016.

Kite’s phase-2 trial treated 51 patients with a common form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and 11 patients with transformed follicular lymphoma and primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma. Of those, two patients died.

However, 76% of the 51 patients treated with KTE-C19 improved while showing a remission rate of 47%. As for patients with TFL and PMBCL, 91% improved and 73% went into complete remission.

These results bode well for placing Kite Pharma’s treatment among the best of the best. The market for lymphoma therapeutics, chock-full of treatment opportunities, is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 3.84% until 2020, with 62% of sales captured in North America.

KITE stock, along with JUNO, look increasingly well poised as biotech stocks to watch in the lymphoma therapeutics market. And Barclays today raised its price target on KITE to $65, maintaining an “equal weight” rating.

With both stocks still in the red for the year, this could make a decent entry point if you’re looking to play the highly speculative sector.

As of this writing, John Kilhefner did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

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Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2016/09/kite-pharma-inc-juno-stock-nasdaq/.

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