Geron has sur­vived an­oth­er scrape with dis­as­ter, but it’s still op­er­at­ing un­der a dark cloud.

This morn­ing the biotech an­nounced that J&J’s re­view of the da­ta from two stud­ies of its drug ime­tel­stat war­rant­ed con­tin­ued work in myelodys­plas­tic syn­dromes and myelofi­bro­sis. But the phar­ma gi­ant $JNJ is still re­serv­ing the right to quit if the da­ta don’t hold up lat­er in the year.

That’s not a big vote of con­fi­dence.

In­vestors re­spond­ed to the pos­i­tive, though, send­ing shares of Geron up 17% in pre-mar­ket trad­ing.

The stud­ies for this drug in­clude a Phase II/III study in low-risk myelodys­plas­tic syn­dromes. Now Geron says that they’ll be shar­ing da­ta with the FDA be­fore de­cid­ing whether to launch the sec­ond part of that study, which is be­ing tweaked.

Geron al­so isn’t like­ly to spur much ex­cite­ment with the ob­ser­va­tion that the spleen vol­ume re­sponse in myelofi­bro­sis was less than that seen for oth­er drugs. But Geron hur­ried on to note that there were sev­er­al signs of clin­i­cal ben­e­fit to en­cour­age re­searchers, adding that “the da­ta sug­gest a po­ten­tial over­all sur­vival ben­e­fit as­so­ci­at­ed with ime­tel­stat treat­ment in these pa­tients.”

En­roll­ment in that sec­ond study, though, is still on hold — al­so not an en­cour­ag­ing sign. And the ju­ry is still out:

Geron ex­pects the longer-term da­ta from the tri­al, po­ten­tial health au­thor­i­ty feed­back, and the to­tal­i­ty of ime­tel­stat pro­gram in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing an as­sess­ment of the evolv­ing treat­ment land­scape in MF and the po­ten­tial ap­pli­ca­tion of ime­tel­stat in mul­ti­ple hema­to­log­ic ma­lig­nan­cies, in­clud­ing MDS, will in­form Janssen’s de­ci­sion whether to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ment of ime­tel­stat in re­lapsed or re­frac­to­ry MF.

Geron shares $GERN took a beat­ing last fall af­ter its drug, a telom­erase in­hibitor, ran in­to trou­ble dur­ing its key Phase II tri­al run by J&J. The low dose group — re­lapsed or re­sis­tant to JAK1 ther­a­py — was not see­ing an ad­e­quate re­sponse and in­ves­ti­ga­tors opt­ed to shut that wing of the tri­al down, trans­fer­ring pa­tients over to the high dose. And new en­roll­ment in the high dose arm was sus­pend­ed so in­ves­ti­ga­tors could take a care­ful look at more ma­ture da­ta.

Geron re­or­ga­nized back in 2011, drop­ping its work on stem cell ther­a­pies and re­mak­ing it­self as a can­cer drug de­vel­op­er. The biotech has gone more than two decades, though, with­out find­ing a drug that war­rants ap­proval.

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.

Incyte touted an accelerated approval for its PD-1 retifanlimab in a rare skin cancer on Wednesday, roughly a year and a half after the drug suffered a rejection in squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCAC).

Retifanlimab, marketed as Zynyz, was approved for metastatic or recurrent locally advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a fast-growing skin cancer typically characterized by a single, painless nodule. It’s roughly 40 times rarer than melanoma, according to the nonprofit Skin Cancer Foundation — but incidence is growing, particularly among older adults, Incyte said in its announcement.