Dive Brief:
- Privately-held BioNTech is teaming up with Roche's Genentech to develop, manufacture and commercialize messenger RNA (mRNA)-based cancer vaccines.
- Genentech will pay $310 million upfront in addition to near-term milestone payments. The pair will share equally in all development costs, as well as any resulting profits.
- BioNTech retains the right to co-promote any resulting drugs in the U.S. and several other countries, including Germany and certain other unspecified European countries.
Dive Insight:
Roche's innovation engine is teaming up with an immunotherapy biotech to create personalized cancer vaccines.
"By collaborating with BioNTech on this cutting edge approach, we hope to truly advance cancer treatments by using a common molecular backbone - mRNA - that is uniquely tailored to an individual patient," said James Sabry, global head of Genentech partnering.
Roche has been pushing forward with its immune-oncology pipeline. The deal could give the big pharma another avenue to compete in this space.
The collaboration will focus on the development of mRNA cancer vaccines targeting neoantigens based on BioNTech's clinical platform. The biotech will continue to develop its non-neoantigen mRNA cancer vaccines on its own.
The mRNA-based vaccines will use a patient's own tumor mutanome signature to hopefully trigger an immune response that is specific and targeted.