Juno Therapeutics CEO and CFO Earn Hefty Bonuses; Poaches Ex-Amgen, Dendreon Scientists

February 25, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

SEATTLE -- Washington-based Juno Therapeutics is making aggressive moves by rewarding its executives with generous bonuses for exceeding corporate goals and expanding its talent pool with new hires, news repots on Tuesday showed.

The company, which was founded about a year-and-a-half ago, awarded CEO Hans Bishop and Steve Harr, the chief financial officer, with hefty bonuses for exceeding corporate goals, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported Tuesday. Bishop was awarded a $450,000 bonus, more than double his salary of $425,000, and Harr received a $200,000 bonus.

In addition to the large bonuses, the company is also expanding its employee roster by hiring for about 50 positions, including research scientists, systems analysts, quality control specialists and quality assurance specialists.

Juno Therapeutics went public in December and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol "JUNO." On Monday the stock closed down slightly, trading at $45.51 per share, not quite double the $24 per share price when the company went public in December. The company made about $265 million on its initial public offering.

While the stock has seen days of volatile trading, the stock is seen as a “buy,” according to an industry analysis in Zack’s Investment Research. Of the three analysts quoted in the Feb 23 article, one rated the stock as a “hold,” and two called the stock a “strong buy.” In January analysts at Goldman Sachs gave the company a neutral rating and set a $52 price rating on the stock. Analysts are predicting Juno will post $.33 earnings per share for its first quarterly report, according to a Tickerreport.com report. No date has been set for when the company will issue that quarterly report.

Juno was established in 2013 as a spinout of the Seattle-based nonprofit Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The company’s long-term goal is to improve and leverage its cell-based platform to develop new products that address a broad range of cancers and other diseases. Juno is developing cell-based cancer immunotherapies based on chimeric antigen receptor and high-affinity T cell receptor technologies to genetically engineer T cells to recognize and kill cancer.

JCAR015 is Juno’s chimeric antigen receptor product candidate indicated for the treatment of relapsed or refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. JCAR015 is currently the subject of a Phase I trial, which is designed to determine the safety and appropriate dose of modifiedT cells in patients. Chimeric antigen receptor technology employs the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells. JCAR014, JCAR016 and JCAR017 are also Juno CAR-T cell product candidates in current levels of testing.

The addition of staff could be a precursor for Juno Therapeutics planned expansion. Earlier this month Juno announced it would open a new facility in Bothell, Wash. support the company’s planned JCAR015 multicenter clinical trial, additional clinical programs in Juno's pipeline and the company's first commercial products.

The Bothell site is expected to come online in 2016. The site will allow the company to conduct multiple clinical trials, Bishop said when the site acquisition was announced.

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