F-star, an invoX Company, Announces Strategic Collaboration and Licence Agreement with Takeda to Discover and Develop Next-Generation Multi-Specific Antibodies

F-star Therapeutics, an invoX company, announced that it has entered into a strategic discovery collaboration and licence agreement with Takeda. The collaboration will leverage F-star’s proprietary fully-human Fcab™ and tetravalent mAb² ™ platforms to research and develop next-generation multi-specific immunotherapies for patients with cancer.

Under the terms of the agreement, F-star and Takeda will jointly research and develop novel Fcab domains against undisclosed immuno-oncology targets. Takeda will receive a worldwide, exclusive royalty-bearing licence to research, develop, and commercialise antibodies incorporating Fcab domains arising from the collaboration, and F-star will retain the right to research, develop, and commercialise antibodies incorporating certain other Fcab domains.

F-star will receive an undisclosed upfront payment as well as research funding for the period of the collaboration. F-star is also eligible to receive potential future development and commercialisation milestone payments of up to approximately $1 billion if all milestones across multiple programs are reached during the term of the agreement, plus royalties on potential annual net sales of any commercial product resulting from the licence.

Neil Brewis, Ph.D., Head of F-star Therapeutics and Chief Scientific Officer said: “We are delighted to expand our relationship with Takeda who shares our vision of developing pioneering multi-specific immunotherapies so more people with cancer can live longer with improved lives. This strategic collaboration leverages the capabilities of both companies by combining F-star’s clinically validated Fcab™ and mAb² ™ platforms with Takeda’s unique understanding of the immune system and its ability to progress drugs to the clinic.”

“Since engaging with F-star in 2022 to develop novel bispecific antibodies and expanding that agreement earlier this year, we continue to make great progress across our collaboration, which speaks to the advantages of their proprietary Fcab™ discovery platform enabling unique tetravalent mAb² bispecific programs,” said Kathy Seidl, Ph.D., head of the Oncology Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda. “This latest collaboration further expands our research program to include novel multi-specific antibodies to support the development of innovative therapies that harness the innate immune system and engage immune cells to attack cancer cells creating benefit for the patients we serve.”

This collaboration and licence agreement represents the third licence agreement that F-star and Takeda have established. Licence agreements for a first and second immune-oncology bispecific antibody were announced in July 2022 and March 2023, respectively. Takeda continues to develop such licensed antibodies outside the scope of the partnership announced today.