Why Iovance Biotherapeutics Shares Are Soaring Today
Shares of Iovance Biotherapeutics (NASDAQ: IOVA) were soaring 12.5% higher as of 11:27 a.m. EST on Friday. The nice jump came after the biotech announced updated data from a phase 2 clinical study evaluating lifileucel in treating metastatic melanoma. These results, presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) annual meeting, included findings that patients receiving lifileucel in the second cohort of the study experienced an objective response rate (ORR) of 35% and that the median duration of response was not reached after 11.3 months into the study.
You can look at Iovance's latest news in two ways. If you're the kind of person who sees a glass of water as half full, the updated phase 2 results should make you more optimistic than ever about the prospects for lifileucel. The experimental drug is one of two pipeline candidates that Iovance is evaluating in pivotal studies. Anything that could potentially improve the likelihood of eventual FDA approval for either of these drugs is very good for Iovance.
Image source: Getty Images.
Source Fool.com
