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Adaptimmune (ADAP) Down on End of Collaboration With Roche

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Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc announced that its strategic collaboration with Roche’s (RHHBY - Free Report) Genentech has been terminated. Shares of ADAP were down 10% on the news.

Both companies collaborated in 2021 to develop and commercialize allogeneic cell therapies to treat multiple oncology indications.

The collaboration had two components — the development of allogeneic T-cell therapies for up to five shared cancer targets and the development of personalized allogeneic T-cell therapies.

ADAP was responsible for developing clinical candidates using its induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derived allogeneic platform to produce T-cells (iT cells). Roche was responsible for the input TCRs and subsequent clinical development and commercialization.

Adaptimmune received an upfront payment of $150 million and was entitled to additional payments of $150 million over five years, along with milestone payments exceeding $3 billion in aggregate value.

The loss of funds from Roche is a setback for ADAP and its investors were clearly disappointed.

Shares of Adaptimmune have risen 46.3% year to date against the industry’s decline of 7.9%.

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Nevertheless, management believes in the long-term potential of its iPSC-based allogeneic platform and remains focused on launching the first product in its sarcoma franchise, afami-cel, pending approval. 

Adaptimmune is preparing to launch the first product in its sarcoma franchise, afami-cel, for the treatment of advanced synovial sarcoma, pending review and approval from the FDA. The regulatory body has set a target action date of Aug 4, 2024.

Per the company, afami-cel would be the first engineered T-cell therapy (for treating solid tumors) to receive commercial approval in the United States.
Adaptimmune's second product in its sarcoma franchise, lete-cel, is being investigated in the IGNYTE-ESO study (NCT03967223).

Lete-cel, an engineered TCR T-cell therapy targeting the solid tumor antigen NY-ESO-1, was originally developed by Adaptimmune, and further developed under a collaboration and license agreement with GSK plc (GSK - Free Report) .

In 2023, Adaptimmune and GSK agreed on terms regarding the return of the NY-ESO program back to the former.

Meanwhile, Roche also has a collaboration agreement with a clinical-stage cell and gene therapy company Poseida Therapeutics, Inc. (PSTX - Free Report) .

Poseida continues to develop allogeneic CAR-T therapies targeting hematological malignancies in partnership with Roche. Poseida has plans to continue the development of P-BCMA-ALLO1 in 2024, in partnership with Roche, for the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

Adaptimmune currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

 

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