From CARTs To Checkpoints, Here's What's Coming In Immuno-Oncology

Shares of Kite Pharma were up more than 12% to $61.80 in pre-market trading this morning, on news that the company’s engineered immune cells, called chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CARTs), are performing well in a clinical trial in lymphoma patients. In the trial, which enrolled 62 patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma who didn’t respond to standard treatments, there was an overall response rate of 76% in a subset of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). And 47% of those patients achieved complete remissions.