Nektar Therapeutics. (NKTR) Accused of Misrepresenting the Viability of its Drug NKTR-214

According to the complaint against the company's officers and directors for alleged violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 between November 11, 2017 through October 2, 2018, NKTR-214 is a modified version of cytokine IL-2. Nektar Therapeutics hypothesized that it could improve IL-2 – which had been approved for treating cancer in 1992, but has limitations – by adding polyethylene glycol molecules to it to extend the half-life and cause fewer side effects than IL-2 alone. On November 11, 2017, Nektar issued a press release touting the viability of NKTR-214 and announcing its active enrollment of patients in the next phase of the trial. On March 1, 2018, in announcing its financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2017, Nektar noted that its year was "truly transformative … as we achieved a number of successes…" and noted the advances it had made in relation to the NKTR-214 trial. Nektar continued to make these representations until Plainview LLC published a report on October 1, 2018, addressing the efficacy of NKTR-214. The report asserted that the core concept of Nektar's plan to develop NKTR-214 into "a new universal cancer treatment" "has never worked in practice," and further asserted that Nektar's decision to only disclose certain trial results represented "an unprecedented level of data opacity." Nektar's stock price fell $5.63 per share, or over 9%, over the following two trading session to close at $55.33 per share on October 2, 2018, and continues to decline.

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