Under the terms of the agreement, Immatics will receive an upfront payment of $120 million and research funding. Immatics is also eligible to receive development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments that could exceed $1.7 billion, as well as tiered royalties on worldwide net sales of TCER products and certain vaccine products commercialized under the agreement. In addition, Immatics has an option to enter into a global profit and loss share arrangement for the most advanced TCER.

The partners said that Moderna will lead the clinical development and commercialization of cancer vaccines and TCER therapeutics resulting from the collaboration. Immatics will be responsible for conducting the preclinical studies and a potential Phase 1 clinical trial investigating IMA203 TCR-T in combination with the PRAME mRNA vaccine to further enhance IMA203 T cell responses. Each party will retain full ownership of its investigational PRAME compound, and the parties will fund the clinical study on a cost sharing basis.

“This partnership presents a groundbreaking opportunity to leverage our mRNA technology alongside Immatics' TCR platform, potentially diversifying and augmenting the way we approach cancer treatment. We believe this collaboration will accelerate the development of novel oncology therapies and bring us one step closer to providing significant benefits for patients with high unmet medical needs,” said Rose Loughlin, Moderna's senior vice president for Research and Early Development.

“We believe Immatics’ cancer target and TCR platforms, along with Moderna's cutting-edge mRNA technology, represent a powerful combination that has the potential to deliver meaningful benefits to cancer patients,” said Toni Weinschenk, chief innovation officer at Immatics.

Carsten Reinhardt, Immatics’ chief development officer, added: “The rapid advancement of our first two TCER programs into the clinic, with additional TCER compounds fueling our pre-clinical pipeline, underscores our commitment to develop innovative therapeutics. We are confident that we can explore the optimal delivery of TCER molecules through this collaboration to maximize clinical benefit in a broad patient population.”