In Juno patient deaths, echoes seen of earlier failed company
By Sharon Begley,
STAT
| 07. 08. 2016
Two top executives and dozens of other employees of Juno Therapeutics, the company that on Thursday was forced to halt a clinical trial after three leukemia patients died, are alumni of another biotech company that declared bankruptcy two years ago after disappointing sales of its one product.
And the roots of both Seattle companies’ troubles appear similar to some close observers: a failure to adequately heed the scientific challenges of bringing complicated cancer immunotherapies to market.
“There are echoes here of [the previous company,] Dendreon,” said a health care industry analyst who declined to be named because of concerns it would hurt client relationships. “Both companies were willing to move ahead with something when they had only a superficial, almost cartoonish, understanding of how [the experimental therapy] works at the cellular level. And now three people are dead. … It’s beyond tragic.”
Continue reading on STAT
Image via Pexels
Related Articles
By Annika Inampudi, Science | 08.01.2025
In June, Sara* received a message asking whether she wanted to continue to participate in a massive, multicenter research project led by scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark. The iPsych study, the message said, had sequenced her genetic data from...
The Center for Genetics and Society is delighted to recommend the current edition of GMWatch Review – Number 589. UK-based GMWatch, a long-standing ally, was founded in 1998 by Jonathan Matthews as an independent organization seeking to counter the enormous corporate political power and propaganda of the GMO industry and its supporters. Matthews and Claire Robinson are its directors and managing editors.
CGS works to ensure that social justice, equity, human rights, and democratic governance are front...
By Ryan Cross, Endpoints News | 08.19.2025
Human eggs are incredibly rare cells. The ovary typically produces only 400 mature eggs across a woman’s life. But biologists in George Church’s lab at Harvard University — a group that’s never content with nature’s limits — just got a...
By Riley Beggin and Jeff Stein, The Washington Post | 08.03.2025
The White House does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization services, two people with knowledge of internal discussions said, even though the idea was one of President Donald Trump’s key campaign pledges.
Last...
