Cel­gene shares sink af­ter an­oth­er PhI­II lym­phoma flop and J&J steps up for the late-stage BC­MA race

Cel­gene shares were hit hard over the last 24 hours as share­hold­ers re­act­ed to a dou­ble dose of bad news: A late-stage Revlim­id com­bo study in fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma just failed and its BC­MA-tar­get­ing CAR-T part­nered with blue­bird $BLUE now finds it­self in a de­vel­op­ment race with phar­ma pow­er­house J&J.

And they aren’t ahead.

In a Phase III pit­ting a com­bi­na­tion of its fran­chise drug Revlim­id with Rit­ux­an against Rit­ux­an and chemo, Cel­gene’s drug failed to make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence for pa­tients. Fol­low­ing a fail­ure for Revlim­id in the most com­mon form of non-Hodgkin’s lym­phoma back in the sum­mer of 2016, it’s not hard to see why an­a­lysts are writ­ing off its hopes for lym­phoma.

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