By Colin Kellaher


Shares of Caribou Biosciences surged in premarket trading Thursday after the clinical-stage, genome-editing biopharmaceutical company said it received a $25 million equity investment at a healthy premium from drug giant Pfizer.

Caribou shares were recently up 36% to $5.56 in premarket trading.

The Berkeley, Calif.-based company said Pfizer bought about 4.69 million shares at $5.33 apiece, nearly 31% above Wednesday's closing price of $4.08.

With the investment, Pfizer is Caribou's second-largest shareholder, according to FactSet data.

Caribou said it would use the new funds to advance CB-011, an immune cloaked allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy currently in a Phase 1 study in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma.

The company said it would maintain full ownership and control of its pipeline of allogeneic CAR-T and CAR-NK cell therapies.

Caribou also said Sriram Krishnaswami, Pfizer's head of multiple myeloma development, joined its scientific advisory board.


Write to Colin Kellaher at colin.kellaher@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

07-06-23 0919ET