Thursday, November 14, 2019
Autolus Therapeutics plc, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing next-generation programmed T cell therapies, and Noile-Immune Biotech, Inc., Tokyo, Japan, a biotechnology company focusing on the development of innovative cancer immunotherapies, today announced that they have entered into a license agreement whereby Autolus will have the right to develop CAR 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 cells as well as the patient’s own T cells.
Through the license agreement with Noile-Immune, Autolus has gained the right to incorporate the PRIME technology in its CAR T cell programs against a limited number of cancer targets. Autolus will make an upfront cash payment and milestone payments to Noile‑Immune, and Noile-Immune is also entitled to receive royalties on net sales of resulting products. Additional terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“We have an emerging pipeline of CAR T cell products targeting solid tumors and are excited to add the Noile-Immune PRIME technology to our existing suite of T cell programming modules,” said Dr. Christian Itin, chairman and chief executive officer of Autolus. “We believe the PRIME technology will help enhance the anti-tumor potential of CAR T cells and expand our ability to design and develop transformational CAR T therapies in a variety of solid tumor indications.”
“Autolus is a leader in the CAR T field, and we are very pleased that they have selected our PRIME technology for their solid tumor pipeline,” said Hidenobu Ishizaki, M.D., Ph.D., president & chief executive officer of Noile-Immune. “This agreement provides further endorsement of our technologies, which were invented by Dr. Koji Tamada, our scientific founder. We look forward to continuing to contribute to, and develop, therapies that have the potential to transform the lives of patients.”
