As part of the collaboration, Medigene, based at Martinsried, near Munich, will contribute its proprietary TCR discovery platform for the development of TCRs against multiple solid tumor targets nominated by Mainz-based BioNTech.

Medigene’s automated, high throughput TCR discovery platform is designed to bypass central tolerance to yield high affinity TCRs. This cell therapy, the companies explain, has become a disruptive medical innovation in the treatment of patients with cancer.

The agreement calls for BioNTech to acquire Medigene’s preclinical TCR program, which combines TCR-4 of Medigene’s MDG10XX program targeting PRAME with Medigene’s proprietary PD1-41BB switch receptor technology.

BioNTech will also obtain the exclusive option to acquire additional existing TCRs in Medigene’s discovery pipeline and will receive licenses to the company’s PD1-41BB switch receptor and precision pairing library. This has the potential to augment TCR cell therapy efficacy and can be applied to all BioNTech cell therapy programs, the Mainz company said.

Financial terms of the deal call for Medigene to receive €26 million upfront, as well as research funding for the period of the collaboration. BioNTech will be responsible for global development and hold exclusive worldwide commercialization rights on all TCR therapies resulting from the R&D collaboration.

The Martinsried partner also will be eligible to receive development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments up to a triple-digit-million euro sum per program in addition to tiered deferred option payments on global net sales for products based on TCRs arising from the collaboration, as well as royalties on products utilizing at least one of the licensed technologies.

Dolores Schendel, CEO and chief scientific officer at Medigene, said the sale and licensing deal with BioNTech is “an important validation from a global leading biotech company of our proprietary technologies to discover and characterize highly specific TCRs and empower resulting TCR-T cells to fight solid tumors.”

The partnership, Schendel said, provides Medigene with “meaningful financial resources” to fuel its next-generation development programs targeting potentially novel tumor-specific “dark matter” antigens and further tools to enhance T-cell-based immunotherapies, as well as additional potential strategic deals with future milestone payments and royalties.

Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist