ROCKVILLE, Md. & CARLSBAD, Calif.– Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc., (“ITI”), a privately-held clinical stage biotechnology company pioneering the study of nucleic acid immunotherapy platforms, announced today a worldwide license and development collaboration agreement with Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American and TASE: LCTX), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel cell transplants for serious medical conditions. The collaboration will generate a novel product candidate derived from Lineage’s investigational allogeneic VAC cancer immunotherapy platform and targeting a proprietary Tumor Associated Antigen (TAA) construct provided by ITI, for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Lineage and ITI will collaborate in the manufacturing and clinical development of a novel VAC product candidate. Following the full development and delivery of Current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) VAC product material, ITI will assume full and independent clinical and commercial responsibility and further advancement of the program. Under the terms of the agreement, Lineage will be entitled to an upfront payment of $2 million paid in the first year and development and commercial milestones totaling $67 million across multiple indications. Lineage also will be eligible to receive royalties up to 10% on future product sales.
“We’re very pleased to collaborate with Lineage, a well-recognized cell therapy company, to expand our pipeline with the development of a novel product candidate to treat GBM,” commented Dr. William Hearl, CEO of ITI. “Over the last several years, ITI has invested significant capital and development resources to identifying multiple novel paths forward in GBM. By teaming up with Lineage, we are hoping to expand our efforts in this difficult to treat indication and look forward to the benefit that the VAC immunotherapy platform can bring to our antigen constructs.”
“The VAC platform provides us with the opportunity to generate a broad pipeline of product candidates, each targeting a different type of cancer,” stated Brian Culley, Lineage CEO. “This collaboration represents the first of many partnerships we hope to enter into with our platform and we believe it helps further validate VAC as a promising new therapeutic vaccine platform. Our objective is to leverage our technology to generate additional VAC-derived cell therapies for our pipeline, as well as in collaboration with partners, capitalizing on the strength of Lineage’s recent manufacturing and cell transplant success. These alliances also will diversify our oncology pipeline across more programs, providing new opportunities for success without the financial burden of independent development. We appreciate ITI selecting our antigen delivery platform for this collaboration and look forward to a productive partnership on this new VAC-derived product candidate. We also are eager to collaborate with additional partners on future versions of VAC.”
