Calithera Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:CALA) Stock Witnesses Dead-Cat Bounce Back

Precision oncology company Calithera Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:CALA) may have seen its stock make considerable losses not too long ago but on Monday, it made a strong recover and went up by as much as 15%.

Market Stats

On Monday, CALA stock moved up 2.43% at $1.01 with more than 2.99 million shares, compared to its average volume of 1.38 million shares. The stock has moved within a range of $0.9511 – 1.0700 after opening trading at $1.03.

High Volatility

While the recovery must be a welcome relief to investors, it is perhaps also important to keep in mind that over the past two weeks, the stock is still down by as much as 50%. As a matter of fact, there was no fresh news about the company yesterday that might have led to the recover. Hence, it might be a good idea for investors to take a look at the reasons behind the actual slump in the stock.

Earlier on in the month on November 5, Calithera Biosciences announced that it had decided to cancel the Phase 2 KEAPSAKE clinical trial since it did not observe any clinical benefit in the patients who had been part of the trial. The patients in question had been treated with telaglenastat. It goes without saying that it was a significant setback for the company and Calithera Biosciences Chief Executive Officer Susan Molineaux expressed her disappointment. It now remains to be seen if the recovery in the Calithera Biosciences stock continues today or not. 

Key Quote

“We are disappointed in this outcome for the KEAPSAKE trial, but it was a well-run study with an interim analysis that gave us an answer to an important clinical question. We also want to express our sincere gratitude to the patients who participated in the trial and their families, as well as the physicians who served as investigators for the trial and their site staff,” said Susan Molineaux, PhD, chief executive officer of Calithera. “We remain committed to patients with difficult-to-treat cancers and will continue to advance our investigational targeted therapies for biomarker-specific patient populations. Our near-term clinical development plans include leveraging our clinical and biomarker expertise in the KEAP1/NRF2 pathway in the development of our mTORC1/2 inhibitor sapanisertib in squamous non-small cell lung cancer, as well as advancing the development of our SYK inhibitor mivavotinib in specific biomarker-defined populations of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. In addition, we are continuing the development of our arginase inhibitor CB-280 for the treatment of cystic fibrosis.”

Traders Corner

CALA stock is trading below the 20-Day and 50-Day Moving averages of $1.43 and $1.91 respectively. Moreover, the stock is trading below the 200-Day moving average of $2.25. The stock is down 51% in the past month.