Sellas Life Sciences shares jumped 13 percent on Friday after the company said its pivotal REGAL Phase 3 trial in acute myeloid leukemia reached the 80 pre-specified death events needed for final efficacy analysis. That milestone moved the study into a formal quiet period and kept overall survival data on track for the fourth quarter.
Traders made the move louder. They swapped 79,890 call contracts on Friday, a pace about 103 percent above the stock's typical daily volume, signaling that the market was not just reacting to the trial update but leaning into the readout still ahead.
That interest matters because Sellas is trying to turn a trial milestone into proof that Galinpepimut-S, also called GPS, can extend life in acute myeloid leukemia. The company said it had $138.3 million in cash as of June 30, which gives it some room to wait for the data rather than force a financing decision before the next catalyst arrives. It also reported a second-quarter net loss of $9.6 million, wider than the $6.6 million loss a year earlier, while research spending climbed to $6.3 million as it pushed REGAL forward and prepared a regulatory submission.
The stock's latest surge did not happen in a vacuum. Moderna and Merck & Co. reported successful late-stage data for an individualized mRNA cancer vaccine in melanoma, and that helped lift sentiment across cancer names. But a win for an mRNA construct in melanoma says little definitive about a peptide vaccine's chances in leukemia, which is why the real test for Sellas remains the survival analysis still to come.
Maxim Group reiterated a Buy rating on the shares with a $30 price target, and the market has already rewarded the name with a 28.6 percent gain since the earnings report roughly two weeks ago. Still, the fourth-quarter overall survival readout will matter more than the trading around it. If REGAL confirms the promise implied by the milestone, Sellas will have a much stronger case that this move was more than sympathy for the sector.
