Collaboration with Medigene
Biotech plans collaboration on cancer therapy

2/21/2022, 9:57 PM

Biontech has another company’s expertise in research on cancer immunotherapies. Medigene introduces a new program to help with planned TCR vaccination. Huge selling stock and an advance signal for it.

Two German biotech companies Biontech and Medigene want to work together on the development of cancer immunotherapies. As part of the collaboration, Medigene will receive an advance payment of 26 million euros from Biontech, as announced by the two companies. The biotech, known for its COVID-19 vaccine, will also reimburse research costs for the three-year collaboration period. The Mainz-based company will also be responsible for global growth and exclusive marketing rights to all treatments as a result of the collaboration.

Biontech is taking over a new program for TCR immunotherapies from Medigene, which is still in preclinical development, as well as a license for the company’s technologies from Martinseid near Munich.

The collaboration is expected to include multiple targets for the development of TCR therapies that can be used to treat solid tumours. Medigene can expect success-related milestone payments of up to three-digit millions per program, as well as royalties on sales.

TCR therapy is one of the immunotherapy treatments that aims to activate the body’s defense system in such a way that it can recognize and destroy cancer cells. In this therapy, doctors remove T cells from the patient’s immune system, genetically modify them so that they recognize cancer cells as hostile, and give them back to the patient. Companies such as Bayer, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson are also doing research in this area. The biotech reinvented itself in this area with acquisitions in the United States last summer.