Cell therapy weekly: Fujifilm announces the launch of 7B¥ life sciences strategic investment fund

Written by Sarah Rehman
CAR-T Cell therapy FDA Gene therapy Industry developments News News round-up

This week: Fujifilm announces the launch of 7B¥ life sciences strategic investment fund, FDA approves investigational new drug applications to three novel cell therapies for the treatment of multiple cancer types and Intellia Therapeutics and ONK Therapeutics enter a strategic collaboration with funding of up to US$920 million.

The news highlights:

Fujifilm announces the launch of 7B¥ life sciences strategic investment fund

Fujifilm Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) has launched a life sciences strategic investment fund, focused on investing in cutting-edge biotechnology developed by early-stage companies worldwide. The investment fund is managed by the Life Sciences Corporate Venture Capital (LS-CVC), with a starting investment of around 7B¥ (around US$60 million). The LS-CVC is part of Fujifilm’s Life Sciences Strategy Headquarters and will now be managing the company’s prior life science investment portfolio, focused on the fields of regenerative medicine, cell therapeutics and drug discovery research products.

“In many cases, early-stage companies are the first to develop cutting-edge technologies and innovative business models. I believe LS-CVC activities will enable us to speedily develop new partnerships with such promising companies, and to deliver value to society through innovative products,” commented Takatoshi Ishikawa, General Manager of Life Sciences Strategy Headquarters.

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FDA approves investigational new drug applications to three novel cell therapies for the treatment of multiple cancer types

The FDA has cleared investigational new drug applications for three autologous cell therapies, including solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. The development brings the cell and gene therapy industry one step closer to bringing novel, specific and safe therapies to patients. The novel agents are as follows:

  1. LYL132 (Lyell Immunopharma; CA, USA) – an autologous TCR-engineered T-cell therapy, cleared for treatment of solid tumors expressing the New York esophageal squamous cell carcinoma 1 (NY-ESO-1) antigen. The treatment aims to enhance durability of treatment and is being developed in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline (Brentford, UK).
  2. TSC-100 (TScan Therapeutics; MA, USA) – an autologous TCR-engineered T-cell therapy, cleared for treatment of hematological malignancies in patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
  3. SQZ-eAPC-HPV (SQZ Biotechnologies; MA, USA) – an autologous mRNA-based cell therapy, cleared for treatment of HPV16-positive cancers. The novel agent is manufactured in under 24 hours and aims to produce enhanced antigen-presenting cells, developed from the patient’s peripheral blood mononuclear cells.

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Intellia Therapeutics and ONK Therapeutics enter a strategic collaboration with funding of up to US$920 million 

Intellia Therapeutics (MA, USA), a genome editing company, and ONK Therapeutics (Galway, Ireland), a cell therapy development company, have announced a strategic collaboration. The alliance will combine Intellia’s genome editing platform with ONK’s optimized natural killer cell therapy platform to advance the field of cell and gene therapy. ONK Therapeutics’ US$920 million investment will grant them non-exclusive rights to Intellia’s ex vivo genome editing and its lipid nanoparticle delivery technologies, as well as exclusive rights to certain Intellia guide RNAs for up to five allogenic natural killer cell therapies.

“We are excited to partner with Intellia and are looking forward to a collaboration that allows us to continue to deliver against our strategy, as we evolve into a clinical-stage company,” remarked Chris Nowers, Chief Executive Officer at ONK Therapeutics.

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