Why bluebird bio Inc. Jumped Higher Today
Shares of biotech bluebird bio (NASDAQ: BLUE) are up 7.3% at 12:24 p.m. EDT, having been up as much as 16.3% today, after the company disclosed data in its abstracts for the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in December. Being focused on blood diseases, basically the biotech's entire pipeline is being covered at ASH, from gene therapy for sickle-cell disease and beta-thalassemia to its CAR-T bb2121 program.
Arguably the most important data comes from Bluebird's LentiGlobin gene therapy for sickle-cell disease. Bluebird changed the manufacturing protocol for the therapy to increase the number of copies of the gene inserted into the cell, and improve the ability of the treated cells to be incorporated into the patient, which seems to be having a positive effect.
Two patients have been treated under the new protocol, both of whom had higher copy numbers than were typically produced by the old protocol. Three months after infusion, one of the patients had 1.5 g/dL of the protein expressed by the gene, which is the highest level seen to date in the study.
Source: Fool.com
