Kite, Juno 'Well Positioned' To Win From AACR

SunTrust Robinson Humphrey said Kite Pharma Inc KITE and Juno Therapeutics Inc JUNO are well-positioned heading in to the annual meeting of American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in April.

Both are early-stage pharma companies developing products based on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and T cell receptor (TCR) where the technology uses human T cells to treat cancer. T cells play a key role in human immunity.

"For AACR, the key data for Kite will be two oral presentations 1) ZUMA-1 update and 2) NCI/Kite's update on MAGE-A3 — no abstracts. For ZUMA-1, we hope to see a continuation of CRs and manageable side effects. For MAGE-A3, side effects will be key and a continuation in the response rates we saw emerging at SITC in 2015," analyst Peter Lawson wrote in a note.

Kite announced two oral presentations and two poster presentations at AACR. The two key things to watch for are 1) oral presentations on updated Phase 1 results for KTE-C19, Kite's lead CAR-T product candidate and 2) Phase 1 results for MAGE-A3, their TCR product candidate — both had no abstracts so limited tea leaf reading.

The analyst said Kite and Juno's oral presentations appear well positioned in highly attended scientific sessions — sandwiched between attention grabbing checkpoint data from large pharma. The conference positioning highlights the importance of the data, ensuring it won't be missed at an early stage cancer research conference.

According to Lawson, beyond AACR, key catalysts for KITE/JUNO are:

For KITE; 1) additional Phase 1/2 solid tumor data for MAGE-A3 TCR at ASCO (June 2016), 2) key interim Phase 2 pivotal data from the ZUMA-1 study in 2H16 and 3) data from the HPV program by YE16.

For JUNO; 1) pediatric r/r ALL data, possibly at ASCO, and additional data by YE16, (2) adult r/r ALL Phase 2 data by YE, and (3) early solid tumor data from the ROR-1, MUC-16, or L1-CAM programs by YE.

The analyst has a Buy rating on both Kite and Juno, with price targets of $70 and $50, respectively.