Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATRA) has been having a good day today! The stock peaked this morning at $21.80 and has since leveled off a bit. Currently, the stock is trading at $18.55, putting it up $3.30, or 21.61%, from Thursday’s closing price of $15.25. The stock is still actively on the move as of the time of writing. Atara stock has been fairly steady for the past month, hovering around the $15 range, and today marks its first huge spike since hitting the $17 mark back in October. Could Atara finally be recovering from its drastic fall back in 2015?
What’s the reason behind this most recent stock leap? It no doubt all comes down to the FDA. The FDA has just signed off on Atara beginning Phase 3 for two of its clinical studies. These studies are looking into how tabelecleucel could affect patients with rituximab-refractory Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) associated with post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder (EBV+PTLD).
For those like me who are less in the know about complex medical processes, tabelecleucel is a T-cell immunotherapy developed and being tested by Atara. The hope is that it will be able to treat EBV+PTLD. EBV is a virus that can cause several infections, the most well known being mono. PTLD, which is also linked to mono, is the rapid growth of B-cells in the body that usually occurs due to therapeutic immunosuppression taking place after a patient goes through an organ transplant.
Now that the FDA has passed its approval, Atara will be commencing Phase 3 of these studies shortly, with results expected to be announced in the early part of 2019. The approval by the FDA for the next phase of these studies is a big deal for Atara, and it is paying off for the company in the form of a well-deserved stock hike.
This is quite a turnaround for the company, which announced a loss during quarter three of this year. At, Atara reported a loss of $31.1 million. Now that the company’s stock is moving again, the next few quarter results may not be quite so bad.
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