Astrazeneca plc is making a $220 million equity investment and tossing in $25 million up front to Cellectis SA as part of a new collaboration agreement. The deal is part of Astrazeneca’s efforts, including a July licensing agreement worth about $1 billion with Pfizer Inc., to delve deeper into gene therapy for treating cancer and rare diseases.
Activated phosphoinositide 3-kinase δ syndrome type 1 (APDS1) is a rare disease caused by gain-of-function (GOF) mutations in the PIK3CD gene that presents with combined immunodeficiency due to decreases in IgA, IgG, naive CD4 and naive CD8 cells. Nearly all APDS1 patients suffer from recurrent respiratory tract infections with most presenting with bronchiectasis and chronic viral infections.
It’s been five years since the first CAR T-cell therapy was approved, marking the beginning of a new era in cancer therapy, but it’s been a huge effort from pharma to turn them into commercial therapies. David Sourdive, co-founder and vice president for CMC and manufacturing at gene and cell therapy specialist Cellectis SA, is one of many in the field of advanced therapies who argue that CAR T cells are just the vanguard from a new army of cell therapies that could prove decisive in the war against cancer.
Cytovia Therapeutics Inc. and Cellectis SA expanded their existing partnership to include new chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) target and development in China by Cytovia’s joint venture firm, Cytolynx Therapeutics Hong Kong Ltd.
DUBLIN – Cellectis SA is picking up $15 million worth of equity in Cytovia Therapeutics Inc. and could earn as much as $760 million in development, regulatory and sales milestones from a deal involving up to five gene-edited allogeneic natural killer (NK) cell or chimeric antigen receptor (CAR-NK) cell therapies employing its Talen (transcription activator-like effector nuclease) gene editing technology.
Cellectis SA said the FDA has placed a clinical hold on a phase I study of UCART-CS1A, an allogenic CAR T-cell therapy it has been testing in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, after one person enrolled in the study died from a case of treatment-emergent cardiac arrest. Cellectis' chief medical officer, Carrie Brownstein, told BioWorld she supported the move, which formalized a decision she'd already taken with her team.