Juno CEO Hans Bish­op

Months af­ter one of the worst set­backs in the re­cent his­to­ry of drug de­vel­op­ment left a string of pa­tients dead, Juno has fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed that it will ter­mi­nate its lead drug pro­gram, hop­ing for a bet­ter out­come with an­oth­er CAR-T ther­a­py in its pipeline.

Juno CEO Hans Bish­op claimed $JUNO that its de­ci­sion to shelve JCAR015 was all due to the “un­ex­pect­ed” tox­i­c­i­ty that it dis­cov­ered af­ter the drug killed five pa­tients due to cere­bral ede­ma, or brain swelling. The sec­ond tal­ly of deaths, though, oc­curred in No­vem­ber, af­ter the com­pa­ny con­vinced the FDA to swift­ly lift a clin­i­cal hold on the drug by mak­ing the du­bi­ous claim that elim­i­nat­ing flu­dara­bine from the pre­con­di­tion­ing reg­i­men for pa­tients would re­solve the safe­ty is­sue that had al­ready killed sev­er­al late-stage can­cer pa­tients.

Flu­dara­bine is still com­mon­ly used in most CAR-T stud­ies, need­ed to help these cell ther­a­pies take ef­fect in pa­tients. This first wave of drugs ex­tracts T cells from pa­tients and then reengi­neers them to go af­ter can­cer cells, and progress has been reg­u­lar­ly marred by se­ri­ous safe­ty is­sues. But there’s still been no clear ex­pla­na­tion of why JCAR015 de­railed.

Shares of Juno dropped 8% Wednes­day evening on the biotech’s re­minder of its se­ri­ous­ly flawed ef­forts.

“We con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence en­cour­ag­ing signs of clin­i­cal ben­e­fit in our tri­al ad­dress­ing NHL, but we al­so rec­og­nize the un­for­tu­nate and un­ex­pect­ed tox­i­c­i­ty we saw in our tri­al ad­dress­ing ALL with JCAR015,” said Bish­op in a state­ment. “We have de­cid­ed not to move for­ward with the ROCK­ET tri­al or JCAR015 at this time, even though it gen­er­at­ed im­por­tant learn­ings for us and the im­munother­a­py field.”

Juno threw out sev­er­al vague fac­tors that may have trig­gered the deaths. But they all added up to a re­turn to Phase I to prove their point. And there was no time to go back to the draw­ing board. From the state­ment:

Through the in­ves­ti­ga­tion Juno iden­ti­fied mul­ti­ple fac­tors that may have con­tributed to this in­creased risk, in­clud­ing pa­tient spe­cif­ic fac­tors, the con­di­tion­ing chemother­a­py pa­tients re­ceived, and fac­tors re­lat­ed to the prod­uct. Al­though Juno be­lieves there are pro­to­col mod­i­fi­ca­tions and process im­prove­ments that could en­able Juno to pro­ceed with JCAR015 in clin­i­cal test­ing in adult r/r ALL, Juno would first need to es­tab­lish pre­lim­i­nary safe­ty and dose in a Phase I tri­al. As a re­sult of the tim­ing de­lay that would en­tail and Juno’s be­lief that it has oth­er prod­uct can­di­dates in its pipeline that are like­ly to pro­vide im­proved ef­fi­ca­cy and tol­er­a­bil­i­ty,

As just about every­one who fol­lows this field has ex­pect­ed for some time now, Juno is turn­ing to JCAR017, hop­ing to get back on track af­ter falling far be­hind the two lead­ers in the field: Kite and No­var­tis. In its state­ment to­day, Juno out­lined plans to launch a piv­otal study for r/r dif­fuse large B cell lym­phoma lat­er this year. The biotech, though, has now fall­en be­hind ri­vals by more than a year.

At one point Juno was con­sid­ered a con­tender for a pi­o­neer­ing ap­proval, run­ning neck-and-neck with Kite. Yes­ter­day, though, Kite post­ed im­pres­sive 6-month re­sults for its CAR-T ahead of its ap­pli­ca­tion for ap­proval, as Juno was just get­ting ready to for­mal­ly ter­mi­nate its trou­bled lead pro­gram.

Added Bish­op:

Look­ing for­ward in­to 2017, we con­tin­ue to be op­ti­mistic about the progress we are mak­ing with JCAR017 and our pipeline more broad­ly. We ex­pect 2017 will be a da­ta-rich year of key in­sights, based on up to 20 on­go­ing tri­als by year end, and we plan to present da­ta from these tri­als as ap­pro­pri­ate through­out the year.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.