Genentech, Adaptive Bio Join Forces on Personalized Cancer Drugs R&D
Summary
Genentech is paying Adaptive Biotechnologies $300 million up front in a new partnership focused on developing cancer immunotherapies personalized to individual patients.Adaptive says that its screening technology enables it to discover T-cell receptors (TCRs) that can recognize and target neoantigens, which are proteins generated by tumor mutations.Under the agreement announced Friday, Adaptive will scour its library of TCRs in an effort to find the ones that could be useful in therapies, which Genentech will be responsible for engineering and manufacturing.The companies say such screenings will be part of the manufacturing process for each cell therapy, which is intended to be a custom treatment specific to a patient’s cancer.Genentech, the San Francisco-based subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Roche, could pay Adaptive $2 billion or more in milestones as the experimental therapies in the partnership progress.