Dive Brief:
- Johnson & Johnson has acquired rights to two experimental cell therapies for blood cancer in a move meant to build on the success it’s had developing a CAR-T treatment for multiple myeloma.
- The deal, announced Tuesday with the Maryland-based Cellular Biomedicine Group, has J&J paying $245 million upfront to gain access to two CAR-T therapies that have shown positive early-phase results in patients with recurrent diffuse large B cell lymphoma, or DLBCL, the most common form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
- The agreement increases J&J’s presence in the field of cell therapy. The big drugmaker already sells one treatment, known as Carvykti. The newly added therapies are in early testing or soon will be.
Dive Insight:
Once a latecomer to cell therapy research, J&J has established itself as a major player in recent years. A 2017 licensing deal with Chinese drug developer Legend Biotech yielded Carvykti, which has since become one of only two cell therapies approved in the U.S. for multiple myeloma.
The deal with Cellular Biomedicine shows J&J has broader ambitions. It’s added two programs that represent next-generation approaches. One is already in Phase 1 testing, while the other is expected to begin human studies later this year.
The more advanced of the two programs, for instance, is a “bispecific” treatment, reprogramming a patient’s immune cells to find two different targets — CD19 and CD20 — found on the surface of cancerous cells. The other candidate targets CD20 and is being developed as a treatment for follicular lymphoma.
The agreement includes the initial $245 million payment as well as unspecified milestones and, if the treatments are approved, royalties on net sales. The deal currently excludes China, but J&J can exercise an option to acquire rights there as well.
The agreement is the latest in a string of recent moves for Cellular Biomedicine, meanwhile. The company was one of the first pure-play biotechnology companies from China to publicly list on the Nasdaq stock exchange. But it later went private in 2021 and raised a $120 million Series A round with the help of AstraZeneca’s venture fund and other investors.
Prior to its deal with J&J, Cellular also partnered with Novartis to help supply Kymriah, the first U.S.-approved CAR-T cell therapy, in China.
The alliance is expected to close in the second quarter of 2023.