In re Nektar Therapeutics Securities Litigation

I. BACKGROUND

1 Plaintiffs bring this securities action “on behalf of a class of purchasers of the common 2 stock of Nektar who bought their shares between January 10, 2017, and September 28, 2018, 3 inclusive (the ‘Class Period’).” SAC at ¶ 1. The following facts are taken from the SAC. 4 Nektar is a research-based biopharmaceutical company with a “research and development 5 pipeline of new investigational drugs [that] includes treatments for cancer, autoimmune disease, 6 and chronic pain.” Id. at ¶ 13. At issue in this case is Nektar’s development of its “flagship” drug, 7 NKTR-214. Id. at ¶ 2. NKTR-214 was “a modified version of Interleukin-2,” a human protein 8 that “triggers the body’s production of cancer-fighting cells.” Id. at ¶¶ 3–4. While Interleukin-2 9 “has long been an approved cancer therapy,” a patient would need “significant quantities of native 10 [Interleukin]-2 to get any kind of effect, and at that point it’s wildly toxic.” Id. at ¶ 3 (quotations 11 omitted). The Company designed NKTR-214 to address this problem and “produce significant 12 quantities of cancer-fighting cells without affecting the production of immunosuppressive cells.” Id. at 4…