Date: 2017-09-06
Type of information: Licensing agreement
Compound: nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (mRNA)
Company: BioNTech (Germany) Cellscript (USA - WI)
Therapeutic area: Technology - Services
Type agreement: licensing
Action mechanism: mRNA
Disease:
Details:
- • On September 6, 2017, BioNTech, a fully integrated biotechnology company pioneering individualized cancer immunotherapy, announced that it has entered into a broad and comprehensive non-exclusive patent licensing agreement with Cellscript covering nucleoside modified messenger RNA (mRNA) for use in all in vivo applications, including therapeutic and nontherapeutic applications in humans and animals.
- Modified mRNAs covered by these technologies exhibit
reduced innate immunogenicity, thereby allowing repeated dosing of mRNA therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and other diseases such as protein-deficient rare diseases. The modified mRNA technology is complementary to, but separate from, BioNTech's other mRNA technologies used in its clinical-stage cancer vaccines for the treatment of cancer.
- The patents for Cellscript’s nucleoside-modified RNA technologies are the result of research conducted
by Prof. Katalin Karikó, Ph.D. and Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania Medical
School. Prof. Karikó, one of the world’s leading experts in mRNA biochemistry, with more than 30 years of
experience, joined BioNTech in 2013. She has published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers and conducted
groundbreaking research into the discovery that incorporation of modified nucleosides suppresses
immunogenicity of RNA, consequently demonstrating the feasibility of using nucleoside-modified mRNA for
protein replacement in vivo. She is co-inventor of therapeutic mRNA-related patents, including the patents
for RNA containing modified nucleosides.
BioNTech recently reported preclinical animal data in Nature Medicine demonstrating that in vivo delivery
of mRNA encoding T cell-engaging bispecific antibodies eliminated aggressive large tumors in mice.
- Administering an mRNA encoding a bispecific antibody and thereby enabling the patient’s body to act as a factory, synthesizing the active therapeutic antibody itself, may profoundly reduce complexity and decrease drug development times compared to protein-based approaches.
Financial terms:
- Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
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