TILT Biotherapeutics announces that they have signed a license agreement with Biotheus Inc. (“Biotheus”), a privately held Chinese company based in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. Under the agreement TILT has granted Biotheus rights for development and commercialization of TILT’s proprietary oncolytic virus TILT-123 in Greater China (including Mainland China, Hongkong, Taiwan and Macau).
The license agreement includes an upfront payment as well as milestone payments linked to finishing of various phases of clinical development and obtaining marketing approvals. Under the agreement TILT is eligible to receive upfront and milestone payments as well as significant royalties on future sales.
“We are very happy to give our flagship product TILT-123 into the expert hands of Biotheus. TILT-123 is a unique product developed for activation of T-cells, and currently under clinical development in Europe and soon in the US. Biotheus has an interesting portfolio of synergic compounds and valuable development expertise in immuno-oncology. We believe that this collaboration greatly supports the global development and commercialization of TILT-123 while making the product also available to Chinese cancer patients.” says Akseli Hemminki, MD, PhD, eMBA, Founder and CEO of TILT Biotherapeutics Ltd.
The patented TILT technology is based on novel oncolytic viruses coding for cytokines. The constructs are unique in structure, sequence and function. TILT-123 is a human 5/3 chimeric adenovirus capable of replicating only in cells defective in retinoblastoma/p16 pathway, found in most human tumors. TILT-123 was further modified to insert expression sequences for two cytokines: human Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (hTNFα) and human Interleukin 2 (hIL-2).