Roche’s Genentech and Arsenal Biosciences (ArsenalBio) – a privately held programmable cell therapy company engineering advanced CAR-T therapies for solid tumours – have announced a multi-year collaboration to identify features of successful T-cell therapies for oncology and develop new understandings of their effects through preclinical analysis.
Both companies will leverage their learnings in the development of their own future therapeutic candidates as part of the agreement, which will also see Arsenal receive $70m in upfront payments, as well as research, development and commercial milestones.
ArsenalBio’s proprietary technology will be deployed by the two companies for ‘high-throughput screening and engineering of T-cells, to identify critical success circuits in T-cell based therapies’, ArsenalBio said in a statement.
Ken Drazan, chief executive officer, ArsenalBio, said: “We are proud to be working with Genentech, a pioneer in immunology, cancer, and now the application of machine learning research, to better understand how to leverage the immune system for the treatment of cancer.”
The San Francisco-based company’s discovery process utilises the convergence of automation, large-scale genome engineering with high-content profiling and ‘cutting-edge’ machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to aid and advance the design, building and testing of next-generation cell therapies for cancer.
“This collaboration is a testament to the strength of our platforms and their utility in identifying the attributes of T cells that offer the most promise in addressing unmet medical needs across cancer,” Drazan added.
While CAR-T therapy has shown promising results in blood cancers, solid tumours present additional challenges, including an adversarial tumour microenvironment, that limit the effectiveness of adoptive T-cell therapy.
ArsenalBio’s engineering platform spans a range of cutting-edge technology, including high-throughput CRISPR-based gene editing, synthetic biology and computational biology, to create new synthetic biological programmes aimed at enhancing T-cell functions to enable them to overcome the complex immunological defence systems present in and surrounding solid tumours
James Sabry, global head of Roche Pharma Partnering, said: “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.”
Earlier in September, ArsenalBio raised $220m in Series B Funding, with backing from Bristol Myers Squibb, Byers Capital, Emerson Collective Investments, Green Sands, Hitachi Ventures and Sixth Street, among others.
The company said in a statement that the proceeds would help ‘expand its programmable cell therapy research activities and grow its pipeline of therapeutic candidates for solid tumour malignancies across a range of cancer indications’.
