Juno Therapeutics is just a little more than a year old, but the Seattle area biotech startup has quite the following on Wall Street. The company’s stock closed today at $39.20 a share, well above its IPO price of $24 a share. With that continued rise, the company is now worth more than $3 billion – not bad for a firm that only went public on Friday morning.
It’s good news for the company, which is developing a new cancer treatment that genetically engineers a patient’s t-cells – a component of their immune system – to fight their cancer. That has the potential to serve as an alternative for traditional cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which could mean big bucks for Juno and its investors.
The company spun out of research from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Prior to going public, the company raised more than $300 million from private investors, including Arch Venture Partners and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
