Roche’s Genentech has broken off its collaboration and license agreement on off-the-shelf T cell therapies with Adaptimmune.
The pullback means Adaptimmune could miss out on about $3 billion in downstream payments as part of the agreement that was disclosed two and a half years ago. Biobucks, as they’re colloquially called in the industry, are pharma’s approach to drug development pacts and usually don’t come to full fruition.
Adaptimmune had collected $150 million upfront and $35 million so far in milestone payments, the biotech disclosed in an SEC filing. The termination will take place in 180 days, and Adaptimmune will not receive any more payments.
Adrian Rawcliffe“We’ve had a very valuable collaboration with our partner Genentech, and we continue to believe in the long-term potential of our iPSC-based allogeneic platform,” Adaptimmune CEO Adrian Rawcliffe said in a Friday press release.
The move marks another axed pharma partnership for Adaptimmune, as GSK also culled a tie-up in the fall of 2022. After that reneged deal, it trimmed its staff and then merged with another cell therapy company, TCR² Therapeutics.
Genentech had hoped the handshake with Adaptimmune would lead to personalized cell approaches. The companies were looking to create two types of allogeneic T cell therapies: off-the-shelf αβ T cell therapies and personalized treatments that used αβ T cell receptors (TCRs) isolated from a patient.
“Unfortunately, since signing our partnership, other factors have evolved which changed our original assumptions,”a Genentech spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Endpoints News. “This, in combination with a broader portfolio review at Roche and Genentech aimed at focusing on delivering high-impact and transformative medicines to more patients faster, led us to the decision to discontinue our partnership at this point,” the spokesperson added.
Earlier this week, Genentech told Endpoints it was reducing its overall headcount by about 3%, a move that impacts multiple departments.
The Friday move does not impact Adaptimmune’s lead candidate, afami-cel, which is due for an Aug. 4 FDA approval decision. The biotech hopes to secure the first green light for an engineered TCR-T cell therapy for a solid tumor. The cell therapy is under review for synovial sarcoma.
“Over the past 12 months, we’ve been resolutely focused on our late-stage autologous pipeline — in particular, our sarcoma franchise,” Rawcliffe said. “We have the resources to deliver afami-cel to market as planned.”
Investors keenly await the FDA approval decision.
“Although allogeneic approaches such as the Adaptimmune/Roche collaboration have long term potential, the program was not a significant focus of investors and we continue to believe share performance will be driven by the launch of afami-cel in sarcoma (PDUFA of Aug 4) and the success/failure of autologous programs in additional solid tumors,” TD Cowen analyst Marc Frahm wrote in a note to clients shortly after the news.
Adaptimmune will host an investor day on April 18. In its latest quarterly update, the company had projected runway “into early 2026,” when factoring in “additional payments” under the Genentech pact. “Regarding our financials, we are not changing guidance at this point, we will update at Q1,” a spokesperson told Endpoints via email. It had $143.9 million in cash and equivalents at the end of 2023.
The company also has a collaboration with Alpine Immune Sciences, which Vertex said earlier this week it would buy for $4.9 billion.