Gilead’s Kite Pharma is doubling down on in vivo CAR-T, this time inking a deal worth up to $1.64 billion biobucks with China biotech Pregene Biopharma.
Kite has paid out $120 million upfront to research and develop next-generation in vivo therapies with Pregene, according to an Oct. 16 release (PDF, Chinese). Shenzhen-based Pregene will also have the chance to make up to $1.52 billion in milestone payments.
The companies said the goal of the deal is to deliver potentially life-changing medicines faster and more efficiently. And while the pair didn’t disclose what indications they were aiming to enter, Pregene co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Zhang Jishuai, Ph.D., said the two aim to bring transformative medicines to patients “especially in oncology, autoimmune diseases and other areas where innovation is urgently needed.”
“Kite is committed to advancing cell therapies for patients worldwide,” a company spokesperson told Fierce. “Our strategic collaboration with Pregene Biopharma enables us to advance clinical proof-of-concept studies for in vivo therapy more quickly by integrating complementary technologies and expertise.”
Clinical-stage Pregene touts a high-throughput CAR-T/CAR-NK/TCR-T drug priority platform, plus novel cell and lentivirus manufacturing processes, and its own autologous and allogeneic therapy programs, according to the biotech.
The Chinese biotech also helped AstraZeneca-owned EsoBiotec design its in vivo CAR-T. The Big Pharma bought out EsoBiotec back in March for up to $1 billion dollars.
For Kite, the Pregene pact follows a $350 million buyout of Interius BioTherapeutics that gave the Gilead subsidiary an in vivo platform designed to generate CAR T cells inside a patient’s body.
Related
Recently, Kite cut off a collaboration with Shoreline Biosciences, ending a research partnership for off-the-shelf cell therapies that was valued at more than $2.3 billion. The pair had been working to engineer natural killer cells to pursue CAR targets in blood cancers, with the potential to later expand the deal to engineering macrophages as well.
Manufacturing and scalability challenges, plus the need for patients to receive lymphodepleting chemotherapy, have limited the accessibility of traditional CAR T-cell therapies. Both of Gilead’s approved CAR-Ts—Yescarta and Tecartus—are traditional ex vivo therapies, meaning they require cell harvesting, engineering and reinfusion.
In theory, in vivo CAR-Ts could allow more people to receive powerful therapies.
Gilead isn’t the only one who has put money behind the science. Earlier this year, AbbVie paid $2.1 billion for in vivo CAR-T player Capstan Therapeutics, while AstraZeneca handed over $425 million upfront for EsoBiotec.
Even the federal government has awarded a recent string of grants into in vivo cell therapies, with money going toward immunoVec, Kernal Bio and Tessera Therapeutics, among others.
