Amgen and Novartis start cancer immunotherapy push
pharmafile | January 7, 2015 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Amgen, Caribou Biosciences, Intellia Therapeutics, Novartis, kite pharma
Amgen and Novartis have launched new licensing agreements with biotech companies that they hope will lead to the development of new cancer treatments.
The Amgen deal will see the US company partner with California-based Kite Pharma in a partnership worth an initial $60 million, which could grow to $525 million “based on the successful completion of regulatory and commercialisation milestones”.
Novartis’ agreements with Intellia Therapeutics and Caribou Biosciences, include a combination of upfront payments, equity investments and success-based royalties.
The R&D elements of the partnerships will focus on producing new cancer offerings called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells, potential new treatments that are predicted to move into late-stage trials over the coming years.
Early-stage trials of CAR T cells featured heavily at the recent American Society for Hematology conference in San Francisco, generating excitement within the industry about their potential as treatments for some cancers, including acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
CARs are proteins that allow genetically-engineered T cells to produce special receptors on their surface, to recognise a specific protein (antigen) on tumour cells, and kill them.
Dr Sean Harper, executive vice president of R&D at Amgen, says this approach “represents one of the most promising approaches to delivering significant impact for patients with cancer.
“We believe joining forces with Kite Pharma will leverage our targets and their leading CAR T cell platform to advance another new promising therapeutic approach to fight cancer.”
While Dr Arie Belldegrun, Kite Pharma’s president and chief executive says: “We believe that the therapeutic candidates resulting from the collaboration will have the potential to dramatically transform CAR approaches and to become some of the most powerful therapies for the treatment of cancer.”
Mark Fishman, president of the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, adds the collaboration gives the company access to a new genomic approach to engineering CAR T cells.
“It is now time to explore how to safely extend this powerful technology to the clinic. It has the potential to open a new branch of medicine, editing the genome to cure disease. Much remains to be learned, and we are delighted to explore these directions with colleagues from Intellia and Caribou.”
Lilian Anekwe
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