What happened
Cellectis (CLLS -4.57%), a French clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that specializes in genome engineering technology to fight cancer, saw its shares rise 20.7% this week, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The stock closed at $3.53 on Friday, then opened at $3.62 on Monday before falling to its 52-week low of $3.43 shortly before the closing bell. It saw its highest point for the week on Thursday, when it reached $4.29 a share. The stock is down more than 80% over the past 12 months and has a 52-week high of $24.03.
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So what
Much of the bounce was merely a reaction to what some saw as an opportunity to buy the stock on the dip. The company's pipeline consists of therapies in early-stage trials, so the payoff for investors is way down the line. Cellectis announced its fourth-quarter earnings and 2021 earnings last week, and it reported an annual earnings-per-share (EPS) loss of $2.55, compared to an EPS loss of $1.91 in 2020.
The company had its initial public offering in 2015 and is still in its infancy, so it's hard to tell how it will do in the long run. Cellectis is funding its research mostly from licensing relationships with privately owned Servier Pharmaceuticals and Allogene Therapeutics (ALLO -9.79%), but the $12 million it received last year in those licensing relationships didn't come close to paying for the company's research and development expenses of $129 million. Cellectis said it had $171.8 million in cash of Dec. 31 and that it should be enough cash to fund the company's operations until 2024 without seeking alternate funding.
Now what
Like any biotech stock, particularly a gene-editing stock, there's plenty of risk with Cellectis. The company is in Phase 1 trials for therapies to treat relapsed or refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, refractory multiple myeloma, and relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia. Though it is further down the line, a more important milestone for Cellectis is its plan to file an investigational new drug application with the Food and Drug Administration this year for its therapy UCART20x22.
It's an allogenic dual CAR T-cell therapy that the company is testing as a therapy for released or refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma. It will be the company's first product designed, developed, and manufactured in-house. That will be a big step for Cellectis, as its other product candidates are being developed as part of collaboration agreements with other companies.
