Fate Therapeutics Seals Deal With JNJ For Cancer Immunotherapies, Stock Jumps

(RTTNews) - Shares of Fate Therapeutics Inc. (FATE) were up over 20 percent in extended trading on Thursday, following a worldwide collaboration with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary (JNJ) Janssen for novel induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cell-based cancer immunotherapies.

Under the multi-year collaboration agreement, Janssen will contribute proprietary antigen-binding domains for up to four tumor-associated antigen targets while Fate Therapeutics will apply its proprietary induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) product platform to research and preclinically develop new iPSC-derived chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) NK and CAR T-cell product candidates.

Fate Therapeutics is eligible to receive $50 million upfront payment and $50 million equity investment through the sale of its newly issued shares at a price of $31.00 per share to Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JJDC, the corporate venture capital arm of Johnson & Johnson.

The Company is also entitled to receive payments of up to $1.8 billion in development and regulatory milestones and up to $1.2 billion in commercial milestone payments, plus double-digit royalties, from Janssen.

Commenting on the deal, Scott Wolchko, President and Chief Executive Officer of Fate Therapeutics, said, "The collaboration strengthens our financial and operating position through a focused effort of developing cell-based cancer immunotherapies utilizing Janssen's proprietary antigen-binding domains, while enabling us to continue to exploit our deep pipeline of wholly-owned product candidates and further develop our off-the-shelf, iPSC-derived cell-based immunotherapies."

FATE closed Thursday's trading at $21.07, up 4.26%. In after-hours, the stock soared 23.40% to $26.