Health and Healthcare
Juno, the Last IPO of 2014, Enters the Market With a Bang
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Juno Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: JUNO) debuted on the market Friday morning and has made a big splash. The pricing for the offering was $24 per share, outside of the original range of $21 to $23 per share, on a total of 9.25 million shares, with an overallotment option for an additional 1.39 million shares.
The underwriters for the offering are Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Leerink Partners and Goldman Sachs.
Juno is a biopharmaceutical company focused on re-engaging the body’s immune system to treat cancer. The company was originally founded on the vision that the use of human cells as therapeutic entities will drive one of the next important phases in medicine. It is developing cell-based cancer immunotherapies based on a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and high-affinity T-cell receptor (TCR) technologies to genetically engineer T cells to recognize and kill cancer cells.
In its research, Juno leverages CAR and TCR technologies to activate a patient’s own T cells so that they attack cancer cells. Through genetic engineering, a gene for a particular CAR or TCR construct is inserted into the T cell that enables it to better recognize cancer cells. The CAR technology directs T cells to recognize cancer cells based on the expression of specific proteins located on the cell surface, whereas TCR technology provides the T cells with a specific T-cell receptor to recognize protein fragments derived from either the surface or inside the cell.
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The following are most advanced product candidates in the company’s pipeline that leverage CAR technology:
Despite pricing at $24 per share, Juno entered the market at $39.00 per share. In the first half of the trading day, shares were up nearly 60% from the pricing, at $38.35, moving nearly 9 million shares. The range on the day — so far — was $36.10 to $39.50.
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