Why bluebird bio Inc and Juno Therapeutics Inc Shot Higher Today

bluebird bio (NASDAQ: BLUE) is up 9.5% and Juno Therapeutics (NASDAQ: JUNO) is up 17% at 12:40 p.m. EDT Monday. Both appear to be riding the coattails of fellow immuno-oncology drug developer Kite Pharma (NASDAQ: KITE), which is being acquired by Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) for $11.9 billion.

Kite, Juno, and Bluebird are all developing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and the related engineered T-cell receptor (TCR) technologies, which make genetic changes to patient's immune T cells, training them to attack cancer cells.

Kite is substantially further ahead of Bluebird and Juno. Kite's lead drug axicabtagene ciloleucel, which treats blood cancers such as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, transformed follicular lymphoma, and primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma, is under FDA review with a decision expected on or before Nov. 29. In March, Juno took a step back after announcing that it was discontinuing development of its lead CAR-T treatment, JCAR015, which was in phase 2 development. Bluebird's CAR-T program bb2121 is still in phase 1, although it's had pretty good data to date.

Source: Fool.com