What happened

Shares of Geron (GERN -1.07%), a clinical-stage biotech company, were up more than 30% this week before CEO John A. Scarlett's scheduled appearance at the Needham Virtual Healthcare Conference on Thursday morning.

The stock soared nearly 20% on Wednesday, as a leaked abstract regarding a trial for Carvykti -- a CAR-T cell blood therapy by Johnson & Johnson and Legend Bio -- may have lifted hopes for other blood therapies in the industry, such as Geron's imetelstat. 

So what

Geron focuses on blood-related cancers, and imetelstat is its lead pipeline candidate. The therapy is awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration following a phase 3 study that showed the therapy was useful in treating patients with low-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), a group of disorders caused by blood cells that are poorly formed or don't work properly. Imetelstat improved transfusion independence at 24 weeks and reduced the number of transfusions patients needed and raised patients' hemoglobin levels.

Besides the Carvykti leak, it's also possible Scarlett could have some type of positive news regarding imetelstat, and information regarding that presentation may gotten out early. Geron has no marketed products, but imetelstat has promise in other oncology applications and the company has said it plans to file its regulatory submission for the therapy in the U.S. and Europe this year. Imetelstat works by targeting a cellular enzyme called telomerase that is rarely in healthy cells but often found in cancer cells.

Now what

There's plenty of risk here, but Geron's lead therapy gives it plenty of upside. The company's cash position was relatively poor at the end of 2022 -- $173.1 million. Geron bolstered that a bit with a stock offering in January and may use the current upswing in the stock's price -- it's up more than 70% over the past 12 months -- to raise more money. The company now says it has $445 million in cash and cash equivalents, enough to fund operations into the third quarter of 2025.

The company lost $141.9 million last year while pulling in revenue of $596,000, mostly from royalties, compared to $1.4 million in 2021 revenue.