Adaptive Biotechnologies to enter into a worldwide collaboration and license agreement with Genentech to develop personalized cell therapies for the treatment of cancer

SEATTLE – (COMMERCIAL THREAD) – Adaptive Biotechnologies, an immunological medicine company, today announced that it will enter into a worldwide collaboration and license agreement with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, to develop, manufacture and commercialize novel cell-based therapies T directed by neoantigens for the treatment of a wide range of cancers. The collaboration will combine Genentech’s global leadership in cancer immunotherapy research and development with Adaptive’s proprietary T cell receptor (TCR) discovery and immune profiling platform (TruTCR â„¢) to accelerate a new transformational treatment paradigm of tailoring cell therapy to each patient’s individual cancer.

“We are delighted that Genentech has chosen Adaptive as a partner to develop neoantigen-driven T cell therapies, a personalized approach to cell therapy,” said Chad Robins, CEO and co-founder of Adaptive Biotechnologies. “Genentech brings a team of scientists and industry-leading drug development experts that could potentially enable our patented TCR discovery and immune profiling platform to help as many patients as possible. ”

Adaptive provides a pioneering technology platform to rapidly identify T cell receptors (TCRs) that can most effectively recognize and directly target specific neoantigens, which are proteins generated by tumor-specific mutations not present in normal tissue . Through this partnership, Adaptive will use TCR’s experimental discovery platform to identify optimal TCRs to most effectively target each patient’s neoantigens for treatment. Genentech will design and manufacture a personalized cellular drug to be delivered to each patient. The goal is to harness the vast majority of therapeutically relevant and patient-specific neoantigens and advance the next generation of cell therapies in oncology.

“We believe that targeting neoantigens may be the most effective approach to harnessing a person’s immune system to fight cancer,” said James Sabry, MD, Ph.D., global head of pharmaceutical partnerships, Rock. “This partnership, which combines Adaptive’s pioneering platform for the identification of T cell receptors with Genentech’s expertise in cancer immunology, has the potential to change the way cancer is treated and bring us closer together truly personalized health.

“Cell therapy approaches in cancer have been limited by the inability to effectively screen and translate the immune response to patient-specific neoantigens. The precise recognition of these neo-antigens is a major driver of the activity of new immunotherapies, ”added Harlan Robins, Ph.D., head of innovation and co-founder of Adaptive Biotechnologies. “Given Adaptive’s unique ability to read and access the immune system on an unprecedented scale and precision, Adaptive and Genentech have the potential to jointly develop a patient-specific approach to treating cancer. ”

Under the terms of the agreement, Adaptive will receive $ 300 million as an up-front payment and may be eligible to receive more than $ 2 billion over time, including payments upon completion of development, regulatory milestones. and specified commercial, and royalties on sales. Genentech will be responsible for clinical, regulatory and marketing efforts, and Adaptive will be responsible for patient-specific screening globally.

Adaptive will continue to use its TCR discovery and immune profiling platform to collaborate on the development of cell therapies in other disease areas, including autoimmune diseases and infectious diseases.

Closing of the deal is subject to customary closing conditions, including authorization under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, and is expected to occur in the first quarter of 2019.

Chad Robins, CEO of Adaptive, will be presenting at the 37th Annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Jan.8 at 11:30 a.m. PT / 2:30 p.m. ET. Robins will also participate in a panel presentation, Reinventing the Disease Continuum Through Precision Health, on January 7, 2019 at 5:00 p.m. PT / 8:00 p.m. ET to discuss the impact of immune profiling on the future of immune medicine.

About the TruTCR screening platform in this collaboration

Adaptive’s TruTCR screening platform enables the discovery of TCRs against any type of clinically relevant antigen at high throughput. The platform can be used to identify antigens that are shared between patients as well as those that are specific to individual patients. In this collaboration, TruTCR will be used to identify and characterize superior clinical grade TCRs for attractive antigen binding and tumor cell killing activity, as well as safety properties by interrogating hundreds of antigens simultaneously with a high sensitivity. To initiate clinical development, the collaboration will first build on Adaptive’s growing library of TCRs specific to well-characterized antigens that have been screened against thousands of known cancer antigens in patients. The ultimate goal, however, is to screen and select a patient’s own potent TCRs targeting their own most relevant neoantigens as personalized therapy. This process of individual patient screening will be implemented as part of the manufacturing process for each patient treated to tailor a cell therapy drug for that specific patient’s cancer.

About adaptive biotechnology

Adaptive Biotechnologies is a pioneer and leader in immune medicine that aims to improve people’s lives by learning from the wisdom of their adaptive immune system. Adaptive’s proprietary immune profiling platform reveals and translates information from our adaptive immune systems with unprecedented scale and precision. Together with drug developers, clinicians and academic researchers, we apply this knowledge to develop products that will transform the way we diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases and infectious diseases. For more information, please visit biotech.com.