Fate Therapeutics down 45% on termination of collaboration pact with Janssen

Fate Therapeutics (FATE) is down 45% afterhours at $6.00 per share following resumption of trade. The company has announced that it has declined a proposal from Johnson&Johnson (JNJ) unit Janssen Biotech for continuation of the collaboration and option agreement between the parties on revised terms and conditions and, as a result, the agreement has been terminated and all collaboration activities will be wound down in the first quarter of 2023. In addition, the Company has completed a strategic review of its natural killer cell product pipeline and has elected to focus on advancing its most innovative and differentiated programs, which have a multiplexed-engineered cellular framework of novel synthetic controls designed to promote multi-antigen targeting, increase potency, extend functional persistence, and enable patient dosing with reduced conditioning chemotherapy. The Company ended the fourth quarter with approximately $475 million in cash, cash equivalents, and receivables and, based on its pipeline prioritization and expense reduction, the Company expects to have sufficient financial resources through the end of 2025 to capitalize on its iPSC-derived chimeric antigen receptor NK and CAR T-cell programs."