On February 9, 2021 Tmunity Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company specifically designed to deliver on the bold promise to ‘uncancer the world’ by creating the best T cell medicines for solid tumor patients, reported the expansion of its T cell engineered therapy collaboration with the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies (CCI) at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) (Press release, Tmunity Therapeutics, FEB 9, 2021, View Source [SID1234574807]).

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Under the terms of the expanded collaboration, Tmunity receives further access and rights to certain platform and manufacturing technologies, as well as the exclusive licensing of a Penn-developed clinical stage asset, a Mesothelin CAR T-cell therapy product. Tmunity has also committed to further funding of T cell engineering research programs at Penn and will receive exclusive rights, subject to certain limitations, to products and technologies resulting from those programs. Tmunity will continue to have certain rights to intellectual property originating from the laboratories of its scientific founders at Penn including: Carl June, MD, Bruce Levine, PhD, and James Riley, PhD.

"We are delighted to see the further expansion of our existing scientific and clinical partnership with Penn to bring leading edge T cell engineered medicines to patients with solid tumors. This partnership with Dr. June and the Penn CCI team further expands our access and certain rights to discoveries, clinical programs, cell engineering, and manufacturing at the cutting edge of T cell engineering, including platform technologies in the field, such as safety switches, signaling domains, payload delivery, and novel approaches for cell persistence and durability, " said Usman ‘Oz’ Azam, President and Chief Executive Officer of Tmunity Therapeutics.

"We formed Tmunity to deliver the promise of T cell medicine to patients, bringing together all the essential expertise, technology, and scientific insight to make the next great leap," said Carl H. June, M.D., Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania. "I am tremendously proud of the progress we have accomplished to date and look forward to building on this success in the future."

Tmunity has licensed 4 clinical stage solid tumor CAR-T programs created at Penn and is supporting the further development of several more pipeline candidates through sponsored research agreements with Penn. Drs. June, Levine, Riley, and Chew are all individual equity holders in Tmunity. Penn receives sponsored research funding from Tmunity, and as inventors of some of the licensed technology, Drs. June, Levine, Riley, and Chew, along with Penn, may receive additional financial benefits under the license in the future. Penn is also an investor in the company and holds equity interests.