PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Tmunity Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company specifically designed to deliver on the bold promise to ‘uncancer the world’ by creating the best T cell medicines for solid tumor patients, today announced the expansion of its T cell engineered therapy collaboration with the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies (CCI) at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).
Under the terms of the expanded collaboration, Tmunity receives further access and rights to certain platform and manufacturing technologies, as well as the exclusive licensing of a Penn-developed clinical stage asset, a Mesothelin CAR T-cell therapy product. Tmunity has also committed to further funding of T cell engineering research programs at Penn and will receive exclusive rights, subject to certain limitations, to products and technologies resulting from those programs. Tmunity will continue to have certain rights to intellectual property originating from the laboratories of its scientific founders at Penn including: Carl June, MD, Bruce Levine, PhD, and James Riley, PhD.
“We are delighted to see the further expansion of our existing scientific and clinical partnership with Penn to bring leading edge T cell engineered medicines to patients with solid tumors. This partnership with Dr. June and the Penn CCI team further expands our access and certain rights to discoveries, clinical programs, cell engineering, and manufacturing at the cutting edge of T cell engineering, including platform technologies in the field, such as safety switches, signaling domains, payload delivery, and novel approaches for cell persistence and durability, ” said Usman ‘Oz’ Azam, President and Chief Executive Officer of Tmunity Therapeutics.
“We formed Tmunity to deliver the promise of T cell medicine to patients, bringing together all the essential expertise, technology, and scientific insight to make the next great leap,” said Carl H. June, M.D., Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania. “I am tremendously proud of the progress we have accomplished to date and look forward to building on this success in the future.”
Tmunity has licensed 4 clinical stage solid tumor CAR-T programs created at Penn and is supporting the further development of several more pipeline candidates through sponsored research agreements with Penn. Drs. June, Levine, Riley, and Chew are all individual equity holders in Tmunity. Penn receives sponsored research funding from Tmunity, and as inventors of some of the licensed technology, Drs. June, Levine, Riley, and Chew, along with Penn, may receive additional financial benefits under the license in the future. Penn is also an investor in the company and holds equity interests.
About Tmunity Therapeutics
Tmunity is a private clinical-stage biotherapeutics company focused on saving and improving lives by delivering the full potential of next-generation T-cell immunotherapy to patients with devastating diseases. Integrating a foundational collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with the groundbreaking scientific, clinical, and manufacturing expertise, and the demonstrated track record of its founders (Carl June, MD; Bruce Levine, PhD; Yangbing Zhao, MD, PhD; Jim Riley, PhD; and Anne Chew, PhD), Tmunity represents a new center of gravity in translational T-cell medicine. Through the University of Pennsylvania, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and other collaborations, the company is developing a diversified portfolio of novel treatments that exhibit best-in-class control over T-cell activation and direction in the body, with a focus in cancer and four programs currently in clinic development. With headquarters in Philadelphia, Tmunity utilizes laboratories and production facilities at Penn and its own dedicated cGMP manufacturing facility in East Norriton, PA, to pursue process improvement and production scale-up in support of clinical development of its T-cell therapies. For more information, visit www.tmunity.com and connect with us on social media at @TmunityTx and LinkedIn.
