AstraZeneca set to licence 5 programmes from Transgène SA

With a licence option agreement AstraZeneca has won another possibility to complement its cancer immuno-oncology pipeline. The British drug major agreed to pay $10m upfront to get access to Transgène’s targeted oncolytic viral platform Invir.IO^TM. Pre-clinical success milestones could sum up to  further $3m for each. If  AstraZeneca exercises its license option, Transgene is eligible to receive an undisclosed option exercise payment on each candidate as well as development and commercial milestones and royalties.

Under the terms of the agreement Transgene will contribute its oncolytic virus expertise, including viral design and engineering, to the collaboration as well as its novel and improved Vaccinia Virus (TK-, RR-) double-deleted backbone and will be responsible for in-vitro pre-clinical development. AstraZeneca will select the transgenes to be encoded within the virus and will be responsible for further in-vivo pre-clinical development and, subject to option exercise, clinical development and commercialization of these novel oncolytic immunotherapies.

Transgene has developed a highly oncolytic Vaccinia virus (VV) strain that can be genetically engineered to express full-length monoclonal antibodies, and additional cytokines intracellularly, at the site of active viral replication and accumulation. Thus, checkpoint blockers can be targeted to boost the immune response locally initiated by the oncolytic activity. Other potential benefits of Transgene’s platform is, that mAb-targeed therapies could reduced systemic side effects and boost intratumoral antibody concentration.