What happened
Shares of Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation (ADPT -2.33%) were up 15.7% for the week after climbing as high as 20.5%, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The clinical-stage biotech company's stock closed last week at $7.31, then rose to as high as $9.08 on Wednesday. The stock is up a little more than 10% so far this year.
So what
Adaptive uses a T-cell receptor (TCR) platform to find cancer targets and engineer TCRs to better recognize and attack certain cancers. It has eight programs in its pipeline, with the lead therapy being afami-cel (afamitresgene autoleucel). Adaptive said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had accepted the company's biologics license application (BLA) for afami-cel, a therapy with genetically engineered T-cells that target the MAGE-A4 tumor antigen in patients with advanced malignancies.
Afami-cel's BLA was supported by a pivotal trial that met its primary endpoint for efficacy, showing a response rate of 38.6% after a single dose of afami-cel in heavily pre-treated patients with metastatic synovial sarcoma. The drug has regenerative medicine advanced therapy designation from the FDA for afami-cel for the treatment of synovial sarcoma, a rare cancer that tends to occur near large joints. The therapy could be approved as early as the second half of next year.
Now what
The company is getting closer to becoming a commercial-stage biotech, and that is what has investors excited. Adaptive, as of the end of the first quarter, reported it had $166 million in cash, enough to fund operations into 2026, it said. The company reported revenue of $47.6 million and net income of $1 million, up from $3.6 million in revenue and a net loss of $50.3 million in the first quarter of 2022. However, those numbers are misleading, as Adaptive's revenue got a short-term jolt due the termination of the company's collaboration agreement with Astellas Pharma.
