SOMERSET, N.J., USA and TOKYO, Japan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Legend Biotech Corporation (“Legend”), a global clinical stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of novel cell therapies, announced today that Legend and Noile-Immune Biotech, Inc. (“Noile-Immune”), a biotechnology company focusing on the development of innovative cancer immunotherapies, have entered into a license agreement whereby Legend will have the right to develop CAR-T and/or TCR-T cell therapies incorporating Noile-Immune’s PRIME (proliferation-inducing and migration-enhancing) technology secreting both IL-7 and CCL19. The PRIME technology is designed to improve proliferation and trafficking into solid tumors of both engineered CAR-T and/or TCR-T cells, as well as the patient’s own T cells.
“We are pleased to enter this strategic collaboration with Noile-Immune Biotech, allowing us to bring together our growing portfolio of solid tumor pipeline programs with Noile-Immune’s PRIME technology,” said Dr. Frank Fan, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder of Legend Biotech. “Utilizing Noile-Immune’s innovative technology platform, we aim to bolster Legend’s novel CAR-T/TCR-T platforms to develop cutting-edge therapeutic candidates in our mission to deliver highly impactful treatments to patients living with cancer.”
“As cell therapies evolve to include solid tumors, it becomes clear that improving CAR-T cell trafficking to tumor sites is important for potent tumor cell killing” said Dr. Yuan Xu, Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of Legend Biotech. “This collaboration demonstrates our commitment to invest in highly innovative technologies as we seek to deliver therapies that address the needs of patients with solid tumor cancers.”
“It is a great advancement to establish a strategic collaboration with Legend Biotech, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company that has shown promise in the development of gene-modified T cell therapies,” said Dr. Koji Tamada, Scientific Founder and External Director of Noile-Immune Biotech. “From a scientific perspective, with the combination of our PRIME technology and the innovative programs of Legend Biotech, our goal is to generate effective therapeutic candidates for the treatment of various solid tumor types that may yield a novel benchmark for immunotherapy in cancer patients.”
“This new partnership is one more confirmation of the interest of global CAR-T experts for our PRIME technology,” said Dr. Hidenobu Ishizaki, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Noile-Immune Biotech. “This collaboration will be invaluable in our efforts to accelerate the development of innovative cellular immunotherapy. We look forward to working with the Legend Biotech team and bringing potentially breakthrough cancer therapies to patients.”
Under the multi-year collaboration agreement, Legend and Noile-Immune will work together on up to two select cancer targets. Legend will gain the right to incorporate the PRIME technology into its CAR-T and/or TCR-T cell programs and will provide to Noile-Immune a total of up to $70M per selected target for certain development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments. Noile-Immune will also be entitled to receive mid-single digit royalties on net sales of any resulting products.
About Legend Biotech
Legend Biotech is a global clinical stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of novel cell therapies for oncology and other indications. Legend Biotech has functional sites in the United States, Europe, and mainland China. Learn more at https://www.legendbiotech.com/.
About Noile-Immune
Noile-Immune Biotech, Inc., based in Tokyo, Japan, is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of novel cancer immunotherapy products with breakthrough technology to eradicate cancer cells. The company aims to discover and develop innovative cancer immunotherapies through the partnerships with experts in academia including Yamaguchi University and The National Cancer Center Japan, and deliver the best-in-class therapies to patients as well. For more information, please visit https://www.noile-immune.com/english/home/.
Cautions Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
This information constitutes forward-looking statements relating to the business of Legend, including express or implied discussions regarding the anticipated benefits from the collaboration agreement with Noile-Immune and its PRIME technology and the ability to develop potential new therapies to address cancer in solid tumors, the clinical development of its product candidates and potential attributes and benefits of such product candidates. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of Legend’s management regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. In particular, Legend’s expectations could be affected by, among other things, uncertainties involved in the ability to implement PRIME technology into Legend’s product candidate pipeline, the development of new pharmaceutical products; unexpected clinical trial results, including additional analysis of existing clinical data or unexpected new clinical data; unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; Legend’s ability to obtain or maintain patent or other proprietary intellectual property protection; competition in general; government, industry, and general public pricing and other political pressures. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated or expected.
The safety and efficacy of the product candidates and/or uses under investigation have not been established. There is no guarantee that the product candidates will receive health authority approval or become commercially available in any country for the uses being investigated.
The information in this press release speaks only as of the date hereof. Legend assumes no duty to update the information to reflect subsequent developments. Readers should not rely upon the information on this page as current or accurate after its publication date.
Abbreviations:
CAR = chimeric antigen receptor
TCR = T-cell receptor
IL-7 = interleukin 7
CCL19 = chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 19
