Juno Therapeutics Lower, To Acquire AbVitro For $78 Million In Cash And Nearly 1.30 Million Shares

Shares of Juno Therapeutics Inc JUNO were trading lower by more than 4 percent at $34.78 during Monday's trading session.

Juno Therapeutics announced earlier that it has acquired AbVitro, Inc., a private biotechnology company whose technology platform accelerates the development of novel immunotherapies by identifying cancer-specific immune cells from natural immune responses at unprecedented resolution.

Juno Therapeutics noted that the acquisition will provide it with a "leading next-generation single cell sequencing platform that will augment Juno's capabilities to create best-in-class engineered T cells against a broad array of cancer targets."

The company also added that it has reached an agreement with principle with Celgene Corporation CELG to license a subset of the acquired technology and grant Celgene options to certain related potential product rights.

Juno Therapeutics has also agreed to pay $78 million in cash and 1,289,193 shares of its stock to acquire AbVitro.

"High throughput, single cell sequencing will meaningfully accelerate our research process in finding both novel antigen targets and appropriate TCR and CAR T cell binders. We remain highly encouraged by the potential of our engineered T cell technology to impact the lives of cancer patients, and this technology improves our capabilities to extend our platform to a broader array of cancer types including solid tumors," said Hy Levitsky, M.D., Juno's Chief Scientific Officer. "We are highly impressed with the quality of the science at AbVitro, and we are delighted to welcome this world-class team to Juno."