AstraZeneca already has cell therapies in its pipeline, and it is now expanding its scope further with a deal to acquire EsoBiotec, a company in early clinical development with therapies made by engineering immune cells inside a patient’s body.
Under acquisition terms announced Monday, AstraZeneca will pay $425 million up front for all outstanding equity of privately held EsoBiotec. The Cambridge, England-based pharmaceutical giant could pay out up to $575 million more if the research achieves development and regulatory milestones.
The cell therapies currently available to patients are manufactured in an expensive, multi-step process. Such autologous therapies are made by harvesting a patient’s own immune cells and then engineering them to go after a particular target. Before those cells can be infused as treatment, a patient must undergo a conditioning regimen that kill off immune cells to make room for the cells in the cell therapy. This step also prevents the immune system from rejecting the cell therapy. The entire process takes weeks.
With the approach of Mont-Saint Guibert, Belgium-based EsoBiotec, engineering immune cells into targeted disease fighters happens in vivo. Using a platform technology called Engineered NanoBody Lentiviral (ENaBL), EsoBiotec uses lentiviruses to deliver genetic instructions to specific immune cells, programming them to recognize and destroy disease-driving cells. ENaBL can be applied to cancer, where cell therapy first reached patients. It can also be used to develop treatments for autoimmune disease, a growing area of research for the cell therapy field.
An EsoBiotec therapy is administered as an intravenous injection that takes minutes. It does not require patients to undergo a conditioning regimen. Unlike autologous cell therapy, in which one batch yields a treatment for a single patient, EsoBiotec claims a batch of its therapy can treat hundreds of patients. These features could make cell therapy more broadly accessible compared to autologous cell therapies, which are expensive to manufacture and are typically available through specialized medical centers rather than community hospitals.
“We are excited about the acquisition of EsoBiotec and the opportunity to rapidly advance their promising in vivo platform,” Susan Galbraith, executive vice president, oncology hematology R&D, AstraZeneca, said in a prepared statement. “We believe it has the potential to transform cell therapy and will enable us to scale these innovative treatments so that many more patients around the world can access them.
Late last year, EsoBiotec began an investigator-initiated clinical test of ESO-T01, an in vivo cell therapy for multiple myeloma. This EsoBiotec allogeneic CAR T- therapy engineers a patient’s immune cells to target BCMA, a protein target addressed by the autologous cell therapies Abecma, from Bristol Myers Squibb, and Carvykti, from partners Legend Biotech and Johnson & Johnson.
While AstraZeneca was not part of the first wave of cancer cell therapies, dealmaking has given it a chance to find a place in the next wave. An R&D alliance with Quell Therapeutics is developing therapies based on regulatory T cells (Tregs). Programs under this partnership are in preclinical development for inflammatory bowel disease and type 1 diabetes. AstraZeneca’s collaboration with Cellectis leverages that company’s gene-editing technology. This partnership spans allogeneic cell therapies currently in preclinical development for cancer.
AstraZeneca also has the opportunity to improve on the manufacturability of autologous cell therapy. Last year, the pharma giant completed its $1 billion acquisition of Gracell Biotechnologies, a company with technology that could offer next-day cell therapy manufacturing. Gracell brought to AstraZeneca a separate technology for the manufacturing of allogeneic cell therapies.
There are other companies in pursuit of allogeneic cell therapies. The in vivo engineering approach of Capstan Therapeutics, a University of Pennsylvania spinout, uses messenger RNA to reprogram immune cells. Roche ramped up its pursuit of allogeneic cell therapy with its $1 billion acquisition of partner Poseida Therapeutics. Poseida’s approach uses non-viral technologies to engineer immune cells that come from healthy donors.
Orca Bio is also developing allogeneic cancer cell therapies with immune cells sourced from healthy donors. On Monday, the privately held biotech reported Phase 3 data for lead program Orca-T, an experimental treatment for certain blood cancers. On the main goal of survival free of moderate-to-severe chronic graft versus host disease measured at one year, Menlo Park, California-based Orca reported the study drug group achieved a rate of 78% compared to 38% for those who received a conventional stem cell transplant. An FDA submission is now planned for later this year. But first, more study details will be shared at the upcoming annual meeting of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation next month.
EsoBiotec said it had raised €22 million (about $24 million) to date. AstraZeneca and EsoBiotec expect to close the transaction in the second quarter of this year.
Photo: Christopher Furlong, Getty Images
