Immunocore And Lilly Ink Immunotherapy Partnership
Eli Lilly announced that it has signed into a $45 million collaboration deal with privately held clinical stage biotech firm Immunocore. Together, the companies aim to discover and develop novel cancer immunotherapies called ImmTACs.
ImmTAC (Immune mobilising mTCR Against Cancer) harnesses the body’s own immune system to recognize and destroy cancer or viral cells. Immunocore engineers high affinity T cell receptors and connects them to an antibody fragment to trigger an immune response. As bi-specific proteins, ImmTACs offer a potential new way to fight cancer or viruses while sparing healthy cells. The leading ImmTAC is undergoing Phase II clinical trials for the treatment of late stage melanoma.
As part of the agreement, Eli Lilly will make an upfront payment of $15 million per program to Immunocore for the discovery of new ImmTACs against cancer targets the companies will select together. These will be used to build preclinical candidate packages. Immunocore will receive a $10 million opt-in fee once Lilly accepts a candidate for potential development and marketing. The biotech firm will also have an option to continue joint development programs with Lilly on a cost- and profit-sharing basis. If Immunocore chooses not to exercise the option, it still stands to receive future milestone and royalty payments.
Eva-Lotta Allan, CEO of Immunocore, said “We are very pleased to have entered into this strategic partnership with Lilly, and look forward to working together in an integrated fashion. …We are delighted to advance novel T cell-based therapies into the clinic in collaboration with them.” The company presented its immunotherapy approach at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting earlier this year.
“The major goal and challenge of cancer immunotherapy is to direct the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer. We believe Immunocore's ImmTAC platform has the potential to do just that. We are delighted to be working closely with Immunocore to develop potential novel therapies for cancer patients,” said Dr. Jan Lundberg, EVP of Science and Technology and President of Lilly Research Laboratories.
According to the Financial Times, Eli Lilly already belongs to the top ten oncology companies in the world in terms of market share but continue to lag behind other pharma goliaths such as Merck, Roche, and Bristol-Myers Squibb in the area of immuno-oncology. The company’s partnership with the smaller biotech firm should only help it enter the field of next-generation oncology drugs and increase productivity while sharing costs and risks of drug development.