Israeli-US company Adicet Bio Inc. has signed a large agreement in the field of cancer treatment and received a $25 million advance payment. A few months ago, Adicet took over Israeli company Applied Immune Technologies.
Adicet signed the agreement with US company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: REGN). In addition to the up-front payment, Regeneron will finance Adicet's research program for five years, and has the option to obtain development and commercial rights for a certain number of the product candidates, while Adicet has an option to participate in the development and commercialization on these potential products or is entitled to royalty payments by Regeneron. Biotech company Regeneron has a market cap on Nasdaq of $46 billion.
Adicet was founded in 2014 by Dr. Aya Jakobovits, who previously managed two biotech companies that made successful exits.
At the same time as the merger with Applied Immune Technologies, Adicet raised $51 million from the OrbiMed and Pontifax funds and from the Novartis Venture Fund. The merged company deals in immune-cell therapeutics. The companies' announcement states, "The companies plan to engineer immune cells with fully human chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and T-cell receptors (TCRs) directed to disease-specific cell surface antigens in order to enable the precise engagement and killing of tumor cells. The collaboration is intended to generate multiple clinical product candidates for various hematological and solid tumor cancers."
“Adicet’s immune-cell technology, developed under the leadership of pioneering biotech executive Aya Jakobovits, complements our growing suite of immuno-oncology approaches and therapeutics,” said George D. Yancopoulos, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Regeneron and President of Regeneron Laboratories. “Our proprietary technology platforms give us the ability to develop optimized monoclonal and bispecific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates and now CARs and TCRs for engineered immune-cell therapeutics, opening the door to many different combination approaches to treat cancer patients.”
“We are excited to join forces with Regeneron, an industry leader in the development of cutting-edge platform technologies and immune-based products,” Jakobovits, said, “The collaboration leverages complementary strengths and technologies of the two companies and expands Adicet’s ability to grow a broad pipeline of novel immune cell products to fight different cancer indications.”
Applied Immune Technologies was founded in 2006, managed by Dr. Mira Peled-Kamar on the basis of research by Dr. Yoram Reiter of the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. The unique feature of the technology is its ability to identify targets within the cancer cells, whereas most of the existing technologies can identify targets on the cell membrane.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 4, 2016
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