AbbVie and Caribou enter $340m deal to develop CAR-T cell therapies

AbbVie has signed a collaboration and licensing agreement with Caribou Biosciences for the research and development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapeutics.

Even though allogeneic, ‘off-the-shelf’ CAR-T cell therapies demonstrated early promise in some cancer patients and there exists a need for overcoming the allogeneic CAR-T cell rejection by the host immune system.

Using Caribou’s CRISPR genome editing platform to engineer CAR-T cells to withstand host immune attack would aid in developing the next-generation of ‘off-the-shelf’ cellular therapies to benefit a wider population of patients.

Under the agreement, AbbVie will carry out research and development of two new CAR-T cell therapies directed to targets specified by the company, by leveraging Caribou’s next-generation Cas12a CRISPR hybrid RNA-DNA (chRDNA) genome editing and cell therapy technologies.

AbbVie will have exclusive rights to the Caribou’s genome editing and cell therapy technologies for the selected targets.

For the collaboration programmes, Caribou will carry out specific pre-clinical research, development and manufacturing activities and AbbVie will reimburse Caribou for all activities under the partnership.

As per the deal, AbbVie is in charge of all clinical development, commercialisation and manufacturing. It also holds an option to pay a fee to expand the partnership to include up to two more CAR-T cell therapies.

In this regard, Caribou will get a $40m upfront cash payment and equity investment, as well as up to $300m as future development, regulatory and launch milestones.

11 February 2021

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/