Arsenal Biosciences Announces Joint Discovery Collaboration with Genentech to Identify Features of Successful T-Cell Therapies for Oncology

Arsenal Biosciences, Inc. (ArsenalBio), a privately held programmable cell therapy company engineering advanced CAR T therapies for solid tumors, announced a multi-year collaboration with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group. The companies will deploy ArsenalBio’s proprietary technology for high-throughput screening and engineering of T cells, to identify critical success circuits in T cell-based therapies. This discovery process employs the convergence of automation, large-scale genome engineering with high-content profiling, and cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to aid and advance the design, building, and testing of next-generation cell therapies for cancer. Arsenal will receive $70 million in upfront payments along with research, development, and commercial milestones.

While there has been significant progress using T cell-based therapies in hematological malignancies, solid tumors present additional challenges, including an adversarial tumor microenvironment, that limit the effectiveness of adoptive T cell therapy. ArsenalBio’s engineering platform employs a suite of technologies, including high-throughput CRISPR-based gene editing, synthetic biology, and computational biology, to create new synthetic biological programs aimed at enhancing T cell functions to enable them to overcome the complex immunological defense systems present in and surrounding solid tumors. Under the terms of the collaboration, ArsenalBio and Genentech will deploy synergistic capabilities to study effective T cell-based modifications and develop new understandings of their effects through preclinical analysis. Both companies will leverage these learnings in the development of future therapeutic candidates.

“We are proud to be working with Genentech, a pioneer in immunology, cancer, and now the application of machine learning research, to better understand how to leverage the immune system for the treatment of cancer,” said ArsenalBio Chief Executive Officer Ken Drazan, MD. “This collaboration is a testament to the strength of our platforms and their utility in identifying the attributes of T cells that offer the most promise in addressing unmet medical needs across cancer.”

“By partnering with ArsenalBio, we are accessing powerful technologies to advance the understanding of the biological programming of T cells that might be crucial in providing important therapies for difficult to treat cancers,” said James Sabry, Global Head of Roche Pharma Partnering.