FBR Met With Juno's Management; Here's What Happened

• The share price of Juno Therapeutics, Inc. JUNO has risen 20.41 percent over the past month, touching a high of $43.59 on October 5.
• Ed White of FBR & Co has maintained an Outperform rating on the company, with a price target of $73.
• Following investor meetings with the company’s CEO and CFO, White believes that investors might be “unaware of the advancements that Juno is making in lymphoma,” given their focus on leukemia and solid tumors.

According to the FBR report, “Investors’ discussions focused on the company’s products in development for leukemia, lymphoma, and solid tumors but also on the science behind the treatments with questions centering on manufacturing and cell persistence.”

Analyst Ed White believes that Juno Therapeutics differentiates itself from the competition in the way it selects and activates the cells, partly due to the company’s proprietary reagents and attention to the development process.

“The company’s pipeline is deep with 10 candidates potentially in clinical trials using either CAR or TCR by early 2016,” White mentioned, while stating that the data presented by the company was “impressive.”

“First-in-class therapeutic JCAR015 demonstrated encouraging clinical responses in relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia,” White said. BLA for the drug is likely to be filed in late 2016 or early 2017.

In addition, White believes that the solid tumor market, which has garnered investor attention, “could be enormous,” although the timing of the treatments being developed was likely to significantly lag that for liquid tumors.