Dive Brief:
- Hotly watched cancer T-cell tech firm Juno Therapeutics reported Q2 earnings wherein its loss widened to $66 million, compared to $22.8 million in Q2 2014.
- The reason? The company is aggressively ramping up operations and bolstering its R&D game. Research expenditures skyrocketed to more than $60 million in Q2 (compared to $6.5 million last year) and acquisition-related spending hit $77 million.
- Juno had a massive (and at the time, record-setting for a biotech with no approved drugs) IPO last December.
Dive Insight:
Juno is still very much in the development stage. The biotech doesn't have any drugs on the market and (unsurprisingly) has yet to post a profit.
But there's a number of factors that might bolster its long-term outlook. For instance, the company has been cleared to launch mid-stage trials of an investigational acute lymphoblastic leukemia medication that it hopes could be a game-changer.
And then there's the general hype around CAR-T cancer companies and the frenzied biotech M&A environment, which facilitated a staggering $1 billion, 10-year collaboration deal with Celgene at the end of June that saw the latter firm pay a 102% premium for 9.1 million Juno shares.
Clearly, a lot of the big players are putting a lot of faith in Juno's investigational therapies. But the stock is down modestly after the release of the greater-than-expected Q2 losses.