Immatics US Launches as Spinout of Immatics and MD Anderson Cancer Center
August 26, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
HOUSTON -- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center teamed up with Germany-based Immatics Biotechnologies GmbH to launch Immatics US Inc., which is aimed at developing adoptive cellular therapies (ACT) for the treatment of a number of cancers.
Immatics US will launch with a war chest of more than $60 million, which includes $40 million from Immatics Biotechnologies and $19.7 million in grant money from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.
The new company will be led by Hapreet Singh, the co-founder of Immatics Biotechnologies. Using the technologies at its disposal, Singh said Immatics has “discovered dozens of novel immunotherapy targets” for the company to explore.
“With several complementary development programs guided by some of the most exceptional scientists in the field of cancer immunotherapy, we are in exactly the right place to deliver transforming therapies to cancer patients with high medical need,” Singh said in a statement.
In addition to Singh, company leaders include Steffen Walter, who will be the chief scientific officer, Toni Weinschenk, chief technology officer, and Carsten Reinhardt chief medical officer. There was no indication of how many other employees Immatics U.S. would employ or already has employed.
MD Anderson has a history of forming alliances with large pharmaceutical companies. Earlier this month MD Anderson announced an alliance with Esperance Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to accelerate the clinical development of its lead anti-cancer candidate EP-100 for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Additionally, MD Anderson struck a deal with Merck & Co. to evaluate its blockbuster anti-PD-1 therapy Keytruda in combination with other treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy and other antitumor medicines.
Immatics U.S. will capitalize on its parent company’s technology platform XPRESIDENT for the “discovery and further qualification” of “highly specific cancer targets that can be used as the basis for a range of cancer immunotherapy applications including ACT.” The new company will develop three different ACT approaches for the treatment of tumors with high un-met medical needs, the first of which will enter the clinic in 2016. The three approaches include ACTolog, ACTengine and ACTallo.
The ACTolog process involves selecting, enriching and the ex-vivo expansion of a patient's endogenous T cells specifically recognizing Immatics' XPRESIDENT targets.
ACTengine involves genetically engineering a patient's own T cells to express novel T-cell receptors which are specific to Immatics' XPRESIDENT targets, the company said.
ACTallo is an allogenic approach that will use off-the-shelf T cells that have been engineered to express novel T-cell receptors.
Immatics US, Inc. will develop both autologous and allogenic ACT approaches by capitalizing on MD Anderson's clinical oncology and cell therapy programs and Immatics' cancer target and T-cell receptor (TCR) discovery capabilities, the new company said in a statement this morning.
The new company will use MD Anderson’s cytokine IL-21 for expansion of T cells, which is a gamma-delta T-cell platform for allogeneic cell therapy approaches and various technologies designed to optimize the development of ACT.
“This capability will enable Immatics US, Inc. to develop TCR-based approaches and to have complementary utility with other approaches for addressing tumor targets. Immatics believes its ACT will be both efficacious and safe due to the specificity of its novel well-characterized targets, including novel over-expressed, cancer-testis and neo-antigens ideally suited for specific and safe ACT approaches,” the company said in a statement.