Immusoft and Takeda Collaborate to Discover and Develop Cell Therapies for Rare Neurometabolic Disorders
Immusoft, a cell therapy company dedicated to improving the lives of patients with rare diseases, announced that it has signed a research collaboration and license option agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (“Takeda”) to discover, develop and commercialize transformative cell therapies in rare inherited metabolic disorders with central nervous system (CNS) manifestations and complications using Immusoft’s Immune System Programming (ISP™) technology platform, which modifies a patient’s B cells and instructs the cells to deliver gene-encoded therapies. The collaboration will focus on delivering protein therapeutics across the blood-brain barrier, a promising area of Immusoft’s research, which has the potential to enable the treatment of diseases with high unmet need.
Under the terms of the agreement, Immusoft will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and research funding support. The company is also eligible to receive future option fees and milestone payments with a total potential value of more than $900 million if all options are exercised and all milestones are achieved over the course of the partnership. Takeda has options to exclusively license the programs at the preclinical stage and Immusoft is eligible for tiered royalties on future products resulting from the partnership. Takeda would be responsible for further preclinical and clinical development, and commercialization.
“We are excited to enter this collaboration with Takeda, a recognized global leader in rare disease therapies,” said Sean Ainsworth, Chief Executive Officer, Immusoft. “This advances our leadership position in B cells as biofactories for therapeutic protein delivery, a novel approach that Immusoft has pioneered. This partnership provides Immusoft with significant resources to further develop our Immune System Programming (ISP™) technology platform, and therapies in diseases for which patients have limited options.”
“We continue to build our internal capabilities as well as partner with innovative companies early on in the discovery process to advance our next-generation gene and cell therapy ambitions for rare genetic and hematologic diseases,” said Takeda Rare Diseases Drug Discovery Unit Head Madhu Natarajan. “Working together with Immusoft, we hope to validate their ISP technology for CNS delivery of innovative therapeutics for rare neurometabolic diseases.”
Immusoft is developing a new method to genetically modify cell therapies that has been designed to be durable and redosable. There is significant potential across multiple high value disease states to replace suboptimal standard of care.