On December 19, 2016 Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc (Nasdaq:ADAP), a leader in T-cell therapy to treat cancer, and Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:BLCM), a leader in developing novel, controllable cellular immunotherapies for cancers and orphan inherited blood disorders, reported that they have entered into a staged collaboration to evaluate, develop, and commercialize next-generation T-cell therapies (Press release, Adaptimmune, DEC 19, 2016, View Source [SID1234631816]).
Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo!
Discover why more than 1,500 members use 1stOncology™ to excel in:
Early/Late Stage Pipeline Development - Target Scouting - Clinical Biomarkers - Indication Selection & Expansion - BD&L Contacts - Conference Reports - Combinatorial Drug Settings - Companion Diagnostics - Drug Repositioning - First-in-class Analysis - Competitive Analysis - Deals & Licensing
Schedule Your 30 min Free Demo!
Under the agreement, the companies will evaluate Bellicum’s GoTCR technology (inducible MyD88/CD40 co-stimulation, or iMC) with Adaptimmune’s affinity-optimized SPEAR T-cells for the potential to create enhanced TCR product candidates. Depending on results from the preclinical proof-of-concept phase, the companies expect to progress to a two-target co-development and co-commercialization phase.
"We are committed to advancing our clinical pipeline of proprietary cell therapies and to entering strategic collaborations that can further leverage the unique potential of our controllable T-cell technologies," commented Tom Farrell, President and Chief Executive Officer of Bellicum. "We’re looking forward to working with the Adaptimmune team to create and advance potentially best-in-class TCR therapies."
"As we advance our deep pipeline of second- and third-generation SPEAR T-cell therapies, we are excited by the potential of Bellicum’s iMC switch to complement the activity of our affinity enhanced T-cell therapies, as part of our continuing initiative to assess novel cell therapy enhancement technologies," said James Noble, Adaptimmune’s Chief Executive Officer. "This is an innovative field that requires broad, industry-wide collaborations, such as our relationship with Bellicum and its strong leadership position in switch technology."
About Bellicum’s iMC Technology
Bellicum’s Chemical Induction of Dimerization (CID) technology platform was designed to address the challenges of current cellular immunotherapies by enabling control over cellular activities and functions, such as growth, activation, proliferation, persistence and survival. Bellicum’s CID platform consists of molecular switches—modified forms of signaling proteins—which are triggered inside the patient by infusion of small molecule rimiducid, instead of by natural upstream signals. Current product candidates incorporate either the CaspaCIDe safety switch, or iMC activation switch. After rimiducid is administered, CaspaCIDe is designed to trigger programmed cell death, or apoptosis, and iMC is designed to drive proliferation, activation and/or persistence of T-cells.
About Adaptimmune’s TCR Technology
Adaptimmune’s proprietary SPEAR (Specific Peptide Enhanced Affinity Receptor) T-cell receptor (TCR) technology enables the Company to genetically optimize TCRs in an effort to equip them to recognize and bind cancer antigens that are presented in small quantities on the surface of a cancer cell, whether of intracellular or extracellular origin, thus initiating cell death. The Company’s differentiated, proprietary technology allows it to reliably generate parental TCRs to naturally presented targets, affinity optimize its TCRs to bind cancer proteins from solid and hematologic cancers that are generally unavailable to naturally occurring TCRs, and to significantly reduce the risk of side effects resulting from off-target binding of healthy tissues.