ArsenalBio will collaborate with Genentech to focus on next-generation T cell therapies

Genentech has agreed to a multi-year collaboration with Arsenal Biosciences Inc. to develop next-generation T cell therapies for solid tumors. As part of the deal, Genentech will pay $70 million upfront and grant future research, development, and commercial milestones.

CAR-T cells respond durably to hematological cancers but show unfavorable efficacy towards solid tumors. The main reasons include a lack of suitable target antigens for developing chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), off-target toxicities, insufficient CAR-T cell activation and expansion in vivo, and tumor evasion of CAR-T cells due to loss of antigen expression.

ArsenalBio, in their experimental research, used sophisticated, high-throughput techniques to perform genetic alterations and screening of T cells that showed significant solid tumor clearance. Based on a non-viral CRISPR gene-editing technology, they introduced numerous potential immunotherapeutic knock-in constructs into a defined position in the genome and selected the constructs that showed the best anti-tumor activity. This platform offers a new opportunity to screen large gene constructs that enable enhanced T cell properties. They also have advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to accelerate the building of these next-generation T-cell therapies.

Genentech announced last year the collaboration with another cell therapy leader, Adaptimmune Therapeutics, to develop a) ‘off the shelf’ T cell therapies for up to five shared cancer targets and b) personalized allogeneic T cell therapies. The latest collaboration with ArsenalBio will potentially add more pre-clinical T cell therapy drugs to their portfolio.

“By partnering with ArsenalBio, we are accessing powerful technologies to advance the understanding of the biological programming of T cells that might be crucial in providing important therapies for difficult to treat cancers,” James Sabry, Global Head of Roche Pharma Partnering, said in a statement.

Under this collaboration, ArsenalBio and Genentech will work together to identify effective T cell modifications for developing future therapeutic candidates.