Juno CEO Hans Bishop.
Juno CEO Hans Bishop.

Juno Therapeutics‘ first day as a public company is in the books — and it certainly was a good one.

The Seattle biotech startup priced its initial public offering Thursday night at $24 per share and sold 11 million shares to raise $264 million. By the end of Friday, the company’s stock was trading at $35, or up 45 percent in just one day.

The heavily-funded cancer research company that was formed just 16 months ago priced its IPO above the expected range of $21 to $23 per share, signaling strong demand for the spin out of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

junotherapeuticsShares began trading today on NASDAQ under the ticker JUNO, and at one point hovered around $38 per share. The company now has a market value of $2.67 billion.

Juno, the first Seattle tech company to go public this year, is using human T cells as therapeutic entities in the treatment of cancer and has already raised $314 million in venture funding from Arch Venture Partners, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and others.

Arch Venture Partners owns 13 percent of the company, while the Fred Hutch owns 4.6 percent. The biggest stockholder is Alaska Permanent Fund, which held 32 percent after the offering. CEO Hans Bishop owns 3.2 percent.

Juno is similar to Kite Pharma, another biotech company developing immunotherapies with human T cells. Kite Pharma went public in June and is trading at more than 200 percent from its IPO price.

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