Fate delivers, up to a point

It’s not that the first human data Fate revealed at long last yesterday for its lead Car-NK asset, FT596, were bad – far from it. But the company fell 18% this morning, showing just how overblown market expectations had been.

The problem is that exuberant investors had driven up the group’s valuation to a remarkable $9bn with no clinical validation, and in the absence of knockout data the only way Fate could trade was down. But FT596 does appear to have efficacy on a par with Car-T therapy, and a remarkably clean safety profile, albeit with important doubts over durability.