Legend Biotech Corporation announced that Legend and Noile-Immune Biotech, Inc. have entered into a license agreement whereby Legend will have the right to develop CAR-T and/or TCR-T cell therapies incorporating Noile-Immune’s PRIME (proliferation-inducing and migration-enhancing) technology secreting both IL-7 and CCL19. The PRIME technology is designed to improve proliferation and trafficking into solid tumors of both engineered CAR-T and/or TCR-T cells, as well as the patient’s own T cells.
“We are pleased to enter this strategic collaboration with Noile-Immune Biotech, allowing us to bring together our growing portfolio of solid tumor pipeline programs with Noile-Immune’s PRIME technology,” said Dr. Frank Fan, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder of Legend Biotech. “Utilizing Noile-Immune’s innovative technology platform, we aim to bolster Legend’s novel CAR-T/TCR-T platforms to develop cutting-edge therapeutic candidates in our mission to deliver highly impactful treatments to patients living with cancer.”
“As cell therapies evolve to include solid tumors, it becomes clear that improving CAR-T cell trafficking to tumor sites is important for potent tumor cell killing” said Dr. Yuan Xu, Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of Legend Biotech. “This collaboration demonstrates our commitment to invest in highly innovative technologies as we seek to deliver therapies that address the needs of patients with solid tumor cancers.”
“It is a great advancement to establish a strategic collaboration with Legend Biotech, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company that has shown promise in the development of gene-modified T cell therapies,” said Dr. Koji Tamada, Scientific Founder and External Director of Noile-Immune Biotech. “From a scientific perspective, with the combination of our PRIME technology and the innovative programs of Legend Biotech, our goal is to generate effective therapeutic candidates for the treatment of various solid tumor types that may yield a novel benchmark for immunotherapy in cancer patients.”
“This new partnership is one more confirmation of the interest of global CAR-T experts for our PRIME technology,” said Dr. Hidenobu Ishizaki, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Noile-Immune Biotech. “This collaboration will be invaluable in our efforts to accelerate the development of innovative cellular immunotherapy. We look forward to working with the Legend Biotech team and bringing potentially breakthrough cancer therapies to patients.”
Under the multi-year collaboration agreement, Legend and Noile-Immune will work together on up to two select cancer targets. Legend will gain the right to incorporate the PRIME technology into its CAR-T and/or TCR-T cell programs and will provide to Noile-Immune a total of up to $70M per selected target for certain development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments. Noile-Immune will also be entitled to receive mid-single digit royalties on net sales of any resulting products.