Jounce Gets Back Rights to Cancer Immunotherapy from Bristol Myers Squibb

As Bristol Myers Squibb rakes through the pipeline drugs it picked up when it acquired  Celgene, one of the compounds it’s unloading is JTX-8064. Celgene originally licensed the drug from Jounce Therapeutics in 2019. Bristol Myers Squibb told Jounce they had terminated the deal and all rights were being returned to Jounce.

JTX-8064 is an anti-LILRB2 antibody. LILRB2 is a surface protein on macrophages, a type of immune cells. Jounce and Celgene made their exclusive License Agreement in July 2019, with Celgene paying Jounce a non-refundable $50 million up front. Beyond whatever costs are involved in transitioning the drug back to Jounce, there are no more financial or service obligations.

Celgene and Jounce had an extensive alliance that began in 2016 that could have hit $2.6 billion in various payments. The JTX-8064 was the final deal in that partnership. For the original JTX-8064 deal, the biobucks could have added an additional $380 million to the $50 million down-payment.

“We are thrilled to regain the rights to JTX-8064 and we view this as a significant opportunity for Jounce” said Richard Murray, Jounce’s chief executive officer and president.

He went on to say, “Though we highly valued our longstanding partnership with Celgene, now a Bristol Myers Squibb company, having an additional wholly-owned program enables us to further our mission to discover new immunotherapies from a variety of important immune cell types, and develop them for patients who are not well served by today’s therapies.”

Most recently, on May 15, Jounce announced it is presenting two posters at the upcoming American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting, being held June 22-24. They will present the first preclinical data from the JTX-1811 program, as well as data on the treatment of emergent ICOS hi CD4 T-cells with vopratelimab.

In that case, JTX-1811 is a monoclonal antibody that selectively depletes immuno-suppressive tumor-infiltrating T regulatory (TITR) cells. It targets CCR8, a chemokine enriched on TITR cells. Vopratelimab is Jounce’s lead product candidate, a clinical-stage monoclonal antibody that binds to and activates the Inducible T-cell CO Stimulator (ICOS), a protein on the surface of certain T-cells found in many solid tumors.

The company’s ongoing clinical trials include the Phase II EMERGE trial of vopratelimab and JTX-4014 on non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients who have progressed on or after both a platinum-based regimen and a PD-1 or PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor; the Phase II SELECT trial of vopratelimab in combination with JTX-4014, a PD-1 inhibitor, in NSCLC.

As of March 31, 2020, the company indicated it had cash, cash equivalents and investments of $148.6 million. At the quarterly conference call on May 6, Murray said, “The start to 2020 has been marked by unprecedented times as the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been felt globally. Through this challenging environment, Jounce remains committed to driving our novel science forward as we work hard to bring long-lasting benefit to cancer patients with critical unmet needs and I am proud of our team’s strength and commitment during this time.”

The company believes that the compound returned from Bristol Myers Squibb, JTX-8064, has potential to behave as a checkpoint inhibitor for macrophages, Murray says. “We believe that LILRB2 may function as an immune checkpoint for macrophages and based on our body of existing preclinical data, JTX-8064 has the potential to reprogram tumor-associated macrophages within the microenvironment and enhance anti-tumor immunity. We are eager to advance this program into the clinic and will make every effort to do this expeditiously.”