Date: 2014-01-08
Type of information: R&D agreement
Compound: novel cancer therapies using Immunocore’s Immune Mobilising Monoclonal T-Cell Receptor Against Cancer (ImmTAC) technology
Company: AstraZeneca (UK) Immunocore (UK)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: R&D
collaboration
licensing
Action mechanism: Immune Mobilising Monoclonal T-Cell Receptor Against Cancer (ImmTAC) technology exploits the power of T Cell Receptors (TCRs) to recognise intracellular changes that occur during cancer or viral infection. This recognition ability of TCRs provides the ability to develop extremely potent targeted therapies for cancers. Immunocore engineers these high affinity T Cell Receptors and links them to an antibody fragment which can activate the immune system to kill the targeted cancer or viral cells. These bi-specific proteins, called ImmTACS, have the potential to be extremely potent anti-cancer or anti-viral agents. ImmTACs direct a patient’s T cells to target and destroy only the cancerous cells, leaving healthy tissue undamaged.
Disease:
Details: * On January 8, 2014, Immunocore Limited, an Oxford-based biotechnology company developing novel biological drugs to treat cancer and viral disease, has announced that it has entered into an oncology research collaboration and licensing agreement with MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca. Both companies will research and develop novel cancer therapies using Immunocore’s Immune Mobilising Monoclonal T-Cell Receptor Against Cancer (ImmTAC) technology. Under the terms of the agreement, Immunocore and MedImmune will work together to generate ImmTACs against selected cancer targets. AstraZeneca and MedImmune will have the right to further develop and commercialise ImmTAC products to add to their immune-mediated cancer therapy portfolio.
This deal marks the third major partnership agreement for Immunocore in the last six months, following major research and licensing agreements with Genentech and GSK in summer 2013.
Financial terms: Immunocore will receive an upfront payment of $20 million per programme and the company is then eligible to receive up to $300 million in development and commercial milestone payments for each target programme and significant tiered royalties if the programmes are successful.
Latest news:
