Boehringer buys cancer vaccine company AMAL Therapeutics for €325 million

pharmafile | July 16, 2019 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |  AMAL Therapeutics, Boehringer Ingelheim, Geneva, cancer vaccines, oncology 

Boehringer Ingelheim has bought Swiss biotech AMAL Therapeutics, a company focused on cancer immunotherapy and cancer vaccines.

AMAL’s lead candidate, a stage IV colorectal cancer vaccine ATP128, is set to begin its first in-human trials later this month.

AMAL is headquartered on the medical campus of the University of Geneva. The biotech is a spin-out from the Swiss university which was backed by both corporate and institutional investors which include Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund and High-Tech Gründerfonds.

In acquiring AMAL for as much as €325 million, Boehringer hopes to develop new therapies by combining assets from its cancer immunology portfolio with AMAL’s technology platform KISIMA.

“Acquiring AMAL is part of Boehringer Ingelheim’s long-term strategy to enhance our existing position as an innovator of novel cancer therapies, including immuno-oncology treatments, which leverage cutting-edge scientific discoveries and their applications,” said Michel Pairet, a member of Boehringer Ingelheim’s Board of Managing Directors with responsibility for the company’s Innovation Unit.

“We want to pioneer new paradigms of biology-based care for cancer patients, and the technologies and expertise developed at AMAL are critical to our efforts.”

The acquisition strengthens Boehringer’s position in the field of immune directed therapy. Following a string of cancer focused acquisitions, the firm hopes to develop new immune-oncology therapies for non-inflamed, ‘cold’ tumours. These tumours represent a large group of cancer types refractory to many treatments including checkpoint inhibitor drugs.

Louis Goss