We are selling our position in Juno Therapeutics (JUNO).

Last week Juno, a cancer immunotherapy drug maker, announced that it is placing its Phase 2 clinical trial of JCAR015 on hold as the result of the death of one of its trial subjects, and the likely death of a second subject after both suffered cerebral edema. This development comes on the heels of a similar announcement five months ago, which resulted in this trial being delayed only a week once the FDA investigated the matter and approved the trial’s continuance.

The form of cancer this treatment is designed to address, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, has a high mortality rate so trial patient deaths are disconcerting, but not unexpected given the aggressive nature of the treatment. However, it is unlikely the FDA will be as quick to grant continuation of the trial given the adjustments made after the previous event have did not avoid a similar outcome.

At this point it appears that Juno will not be acquired anytime soon. Meanwhile, our other two cancer immunotherapy stocks, Argos Therapeutics (ARGS) and Ziopharm Oncology (ZIOP), seem to have gained the upper hand as their trial results have encountered fewer roadblocks. For that reason we are selling our position in Juno so we can concentrate our focus in the cancer immunotherapy sector to our other two holdings.