Piper Jaffray analyst Tyler Van Buren lowered his price target for Nektar Therapeutics (NKTR) to $35 from $50 citing trial timeline delays following the company's Q3 results. The analyst, however, keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. Three of six planned registrational trials are ongoing with partner Bristol-Myers (BMY), and management on the call updated the timelines for topline readouts in these trials, which are delayed approximately a year, says Van Buren. He looks forward to the melanoma/PIVOT-02 cohort update at SITC this weekend and is "encouraged to see more of the pipeline advance into clinical development," saying Nektar continues to diversify beyond bempeg.

Bristol Myers Squibb and Cellares, a development and manufacturing organization dedicated to clinical and industrial-scale cell therapy manufacturing, announced a worldwide capacity reservation and supply agreement for the manufacture of CAR T cell therapies in a transaction valued up to $380M in upfront and milestone payments. As part of the agreement, Cellares will optimize, automate, and tech-transfer select Bristol Myers Squibb CAR T cell therapies onto its automated and high-throughput manufacturing platform, the Cell Shuttle. Cellares will dedicate multiple Cell Shuttle and Cell Q systems with fully automated, high-throughput quality control for Bristol Myers Squibb's exclusive use. The Cell Shuttles and Cell Qs will be deployed in Cellares' Smart Factories in the U.S., EU, and Japan. This agreement expands upon the existing collaborations between Bristol Myers Squibb and Cellares. In August 2023, Bristol Myers Squibb participated in Cellares' Series C financing to launch the first IDMO Smart Factory in an effort to meet the demand for cell therapies globally. That same month, Bristol Myers Squibb joined Cellares' Technology Adoption Partnership Program to evaluate the Cell Shuttle's automated manufacturing capabilities.