Global contract research, development and manufacturing organisation (CRDMO) WuXi Biologics has partnered with MediGene to develop TCR-guided T cell engagers (TCR-TCEs) for difficult-to-treat tumours.

The three-year, multi-target collaboration is intended to design and jointly research TCR-TCEs.

WuXi Biologics CEO Dr Chris Chen stated: “This collaboration will further enhance our research service capabilities in our CRDMO business model and underscore our commitment to enabling global partners to speed up their novel therapy discovery and development with our leading technologies and reliable services.”

The collaboration will leverage the expertise of both companies, combining Medigene's sensitive, specific and safe (3S) advanced TCR generation capabilities with WuXi Biologics' anti-CD3 mAb, its TCE [trusted collaboration environment] platform and bispecific antibody platform WuXiBody.

The WuXiBody platform can overcome discovery and CMC [chemistry, manufacturing and controls] barriers, potentially expediting the development process by six to 18 months and significantly reducing manufacturing costs.

It is designed for high expression yield, solubility, stability and ease of purification to homogeneity.

The platform allows for the assembly of almost any mAb sequence pairs into bispecific constructs, which are anticipated to have a low risk of immunogenicity and a longer in vivo half-life.

WuXiBody’s structural flexibility enables the creation of formats with different combinations of valencies to meet diverse biological target requirements.

Medigene CEO Selwyn Ho said: “We are confident that Medigene's known capabilities in generating potential best-in-class 3S TCRs for TCR-T cell therapies can also be applied to non-cellular modalities.

“As such, we are delighted to be able to partner with WuXi Biologics with their validated anti-CD3 mAb, and its industry-leading TCE platform and WuXiBody to support our strategy to apply Medigene's TCRs into new modalities, such as TCR-TCEs for use in patients where additional value can be created beyond TCR-T therapies, for patients and our shareholders.”