Adaptimmune Therapeutics has signed a strategic partnership and licence agreement with Roche Group member, Genentech, to develop and market allogeneic cell therapies for the treatment of multiple cancer indications.
The partnership involves creating allogeneic T-cell therapies for up to five shared cancer targets and the development of customised allogeneic T-cell therapies.
Adaptimmune will develop clinical candidates leveraging its induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-obtained allogeneic platform to create T-cells (iT cells) for each component.
Genentech will oversee the input TCRs and subsequent clinical development and marketing.
As per the deal, Adaptimmune is eligible for $150m in upfront payment from Genentech and further payments of $150m over five years, unless the deal is terminated before this term.
Furthermore, Adaptimmune will get potential research, development, regulatory as well as commercial milestone payments of over $3bn in total.
Genentech will also make tiered mid-single to low-double-digit royalty payments based on net product sales to Adaptimmune.
In addition, Adaptimmune holds an option to equally share profit and costs of the off-the-shelf products in the US.
On Adaptimmune opting in, the company will require to share half of the profits and losses from US sales on such products.
The company will also get regulatory, sales-based milestone and royalty payments on net sales outside the US region.
Roche Pharma Partnering global head James Sabry said: “We believe allogeneic cell therapies could be a game-changing approach for developing personalised therapy platforms based on individual cancer patients’ unique needs.
“This partnership, which combines Adaptimmune’s allogeneic platform with Genentech’s expertise in developing personalised therapies, complements our other efforts to discover and develop personalised cell therapies.”
In May, Genentech and Pieris Pharmaceuticals signed a multi-programme research partnership and licence agreement worth approximately $1.42bn to discover, develop and market respiratory and ophthalmology therapies.
