By Sarina Isaacs

Shares of Cartesian Therapeutics climbed after the company announced positive results in a phase 2b trial of its lead cell-therapy candidate.

The stock was up 8.3% to $15.60 in morning trading Tuesday. Shares are off 39% year to date.

The Frederick, Md., clinical-stage maker of therapies for autoimmune diseases said Tuesday that a long-term follow-up assessment of its Descartes-08 treatment showed deep and sustained benefits in participants with generalized myasthenia gravis, or MG. Cartesian said participants at their 12-month follow-up assessment showed an average 4.8-point reduction in the score for MG activities of daily living, or MG-ADL, after a single six-week course of treatment.

Cartesian added that the deepest and most-compelling sustained responses were seen in participants without prior exposure to biologic therapies, showing an average 7.1-point reduction in their MG-ADL, and with 57% of these patients maintaining minimum symptom expression at the 12-month follow-up.

"The data in participants who had not received prior biologic therapy is particularly striking as this population is most comparable to the patient populations in trials of standard-of-care biologics," said trial investigator Tuan Vu, a University of South Florida neurology professor.

Descartes-08, an autologous engineered chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy product candidate targeting B-cell maturation antigen, also showed a well-tolerated safety profile that supports outpatient administration without the need for lymphodepleting chemotherapy, Cartesian said.

Write to Sarina Isaacs at sarina.isaacs@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 08, 2025 10:11 ET (14:11 GMT)

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