ACQUISITIONS
Good Tx announced acquisition of conditionally active PD-1-regulated IL-2 program by Roche
Good Therapeutics, a privately held company, today announced it has entered into a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by Roche. With this acquisition, Roche will gain rights to Good Therapeutics’ innovative, conditionally active, PD-1-regulated IL-2 program and an exclusive right to the platform technology for the development of PD-1-regulated IL-2 receptor agonist therapeutics. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Roche will make an upfront cash payment of $250 million for the shares on a fully diluted basis and additional payments based on the achievement of predetermined development, regulatory, and commercial milestones. The transaction is conditioned upon clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2022. Following the close of the Roche acquisition, the Good Therapeutics team plans to apply the technology for the design of conditionally active therapeutics to other targets in immuno-oncology and beyond in a new company, Bonum Therapeutics.
PARTNERING
Seagen and Zai Lab entered a license agreement for Tivdak in greater China
Zai Lab and Seagen announced an exclusive collaboration and license agreement for the development and commercialization of Tivdak (tisotumab vedotin-tftv) in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Tivdak is the first and only ADC approved in the U.S. for the treatment of adult patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer with disease progression on or after chemotherapy. Seagen will receive an upfront payment of $30 million, as well as development, regulatory, and commercial milestone payments, and tiered royalties on net sales of Tivdak in the Zai Lab territory. Based on the existing Tivdak co-development and co-commercialization collaboration between Seagen and Genmab, all upfront, milestone payments, and royalties will be shared 50/50 with Genmab. In 2021, FDA granted accelerated approval for Tivdak for the treatment of adult patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer with disease progression on or after chemotherapy. As verification and description of clinical benefit in the US, and to support further global regulatory applications, a confirmatory phase 3 open-label, randomized, global clinical trial, innovaTV 301, is ongoing.
Arsenal Bio announced joint discovery collaboration with Genentech in T cell therapy space
Arsenal Biosciences, a privately held programmable cell therapy company engineering advanced CAR T therapies for solid tumors, today announced a multi-year collaboration with Genentech. The companies will deploy ArsenalBio’s proprietary technology for high-throughput screening and engineering of T cells, to identify critical success circuits in T cell-based therapies. This discovery process employs the convergence of automation, large-scale genome engineering with high-content profiling, and cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to aid and advance the design, building, and testing of next-generation cell therapies for cancer. Arsenal will receive $70 million in upfront payments along with research, development, and commercial milestones. Under the terms of the collaboration, ArsenalBio and Genentech will deploy synergistic capabilities to study effective T cell-based modifications and develop new understandings of their effects through preclinical analysis. Both companies will leverage these learnings in the development of future therapeutic candidates.
Scribe and Sanofi to collaborate on CRISPR-based cell therapies for cancer
Scribe Therapeutics, a molecular engineering company pioneering a CRISPR by Design platform for genetic medicine, announced a strategic collaboration with Sanofi for the use of Scribe’s CRISPR genome editing technologies to enable genetic modification of novel NK cell therapies for cancer. The agreement grants Sanofi non-exclusive rights to Scribe’s proprietary CRISPR platform of wholly owned enzymes to create ex vivo NK cell therapies. Scribe’s suite of custom engineering genome editing and delivery tools called CasX-Editors (XE), based on novel foundations such as the CasX enzyme, will support Sanofi’s expanding pipeline of NK cell therapeutics for oncology.
