Piper Sandler analyst Tyler Van Buren said news of the amended collaboration between Nektar Therapeutics (NKTR) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) was "a positive update all around" as he believes the new registrational trials in adjuvant melanoma and muscle-invasive bladder cancer essentially expand the commercial opportunity for what are two of the more promising datasets and Bristol's "reset" in first-line lung cancer "is a neutral announcement as no one provided credit for lung anyway" to Nektar. Van Buren, who also contends that "the refined development plan in RCC makes a ton of sense," keeps an Overweight rating on Nektar shares.

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.