The discontinued CAR T therapy bbT369 came to Regeneron when the pharma bought all of 2seventy bio’s pipeline assets for $5 million upfront in January 2024.
Regeneron is pulling the plug on an early CAR T asset for relapsed or refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, continuing what has been a difficult stretch for the broader cell therapy space.
The CAR T candidate, dubbed bbT369, was in early-stage development and set to enter Phase II before being discontinued. The decision to forego the mid-stage trial was a “strategic business decision,” a Regeneron spokesperson told Fierce Biotech on Thursday, adding that the pharma has also scrapped plans for future development of bbT369.
Shelving bbT369 will not affect Regeneron’s wider cell therapy strategy, the spokesperson said.
In that regard, however, the pharma’s bench doesn’t appear to be deep. On its pipeline page, Regeneron only lists one other cell therapy, an anti-MUC16 asset called 27T51 being tested in Phase I for ovarian cancer.
In a bid to beef up its presence in cell therapy, Regeneron in January 2024 paid $5 million upfront and promised an undisclosed milestone commitment to acquire the entirety of 2seventy bio’s pipeline of cell therapies, including bbT369. At the time, Regeneron also formed Regeneron Cell Medicines, a dedicated R&D unit that will focus on this modality to develop novel treatments for cancer and immune-mediated diseases.
As part of the purchase, 2seventy also handed over a CAR T therapy called SC-DARIC33. The asset is being tested in a Phase I study of patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia positive for the CD33 marker. The trial is being run by the Seattle Children’s Hospital. Regeneron also got a T cell receptor therapy for solid tumors. Neither asset is listed on Regeneron’s pipeline page.
The cell therapy space has seen a number of high-profile exits in recent weeks. Takeda was first out the door in early October with the announcement that it would no longer invest in the modality and would offload its current assets and technologies to an external partner. Novo Nordisk followed a few days later, abandoning a clutch of cell therapy programs, including one for type 1 diabetes. In conjunction with this move, the Danish pharma also laid off around 250 employees.
More recently, Galapagos earlier this week announced that it will close down its cell therapy operations as part of a sweeping strategic review. After trying and failing to find potential buyers for its cell therapy assets, the biotech decided to walk away from the modality completely to channel money instead “to other areas of unmet need.”
