Juno Therapeutics claims win in CAR T-cell patent challenge

US biotech Juno Therapeutics (Nasdaq: JUNO) says it has defeated an attempt to invalidate a patent exclusively licensed by cancer drug developer Kite Pharma (Nasdaq: KITE) that covers, among other things, a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell used for the treatment of B-cell malignancies, and that it is suing Kite seeking a declaratory judgment that Kite’s lead product candidate, KTE-C19, will infringe the patent when commercially produced.

Kite shares dipped 2.18% to $50.66 by close of trading on Monday, while June was down 1.95% at $18.75, though recovered to $18.70 after hours.

In August 2015, Kite filed an inter partes review in the US Patent & Trademark Office in an attempt to invalidate US Patent No 7,446,190 by challenging all of its claims. Juno exclusively licenses the ’190 patent, titled “Nucleic Acids Encoding Chimeric T Cell Receptors,” from Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, an affiliate of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The patent covers, among other things, a construct for a CD-19 targeted CAR T cell treatment that employs a CD28 co-stimulatory domain.