Business Development
Medigene is developing Living Immunotherapies, with the goal of providing revolutionizing cancer treatments that offer a higher quality of life for patients.
We aim to enter strategic partnerships with interested parties to share the transformative potential of cancer immunotherapies with partners who truly believe in innovation.
Please contact our business development team if you are interested leveraging Medigene’s end-to-end platform and develop truly differentiated TCR-T therapies aimed at difficult to treat cancers.
Contact
James Cornicelli
Senior Vice President,
Head of Corporate Development & Strategy
corpdev@medigene.com
Developmental and Commercial Partnerships
In order to change the paradigm of cancer treatment, Medigene seeks partnerships with other leaders in the field to exploit the full potential of our immunotherapy technology platforms. Therefore, we are already collaborating with industry leaders:
BioNTech SE, Germany
In February 2022, Medigene and BioNTech entered into a global strategic partnership to advance TCR-based immunotherapies against cancer. The research collaboration will encompass several target structures and Medigene will contribute its proprietary TCR discovery platform for the development of TCRs against multiple solid tumor targets nominated by BioNTech. BioNTech will be responsible for global development and hold exclusive worldwide commercialization rights on all TCR therapies resulting from this research collaboration.
BioNTech acquired Medigene’s TCR-4 of the MDG10XX program targeting the cancer antigen PRAME. BioNTech also obtained the exclusive option to acquire additional existing TCRs in Medigene’s discovery pipeline and received licenses to Medigene’s PD1-41BB switch receptor and precision pairing library. This has the potential to augment TCR cell therapy efficacy and can be applied to all BioNTech cell therapy programs.
Hongsheng Sciences HK Limited, China
In April 2019, Medigene has entered into a multi-program license and collaboration agreement for its T cell receptor-modified T cell therapies (TCR-Ts) and a dendritic cell (DC) vaccine with Cytovant Sciences, an affiliate of the US biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences Ltd. Cytovant was founded by the Roivant Group as a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing innovative cellular therapeutics in Asia. In July 2022, Roivant Sciences divested its holding in Cytovant Sciences, which subsequently became Hongsheng Sciences HK Limited.
2seventy bio, Inc., USA
In September 2016, bluebird bio (as of November 2021: 2seventy bio) and Medigene established a strategic TCR alliance in cancer immunotherapy. The strategic research and development collaboration and licensing agreement encompasses TCR- immunotherapies against six targets (after an extension of the contract in May 2018). Under the terms of the agreement, Medigene will be responsible for the generation and delivery of the TCR-T cells using its TCR-isolation and characterization platform. Following collaborative preclinical development, 2seventy bio will assume sole responsibility for the clinical development and commercialization of the TCR-T product candidates and will receive an exclusive license for the intellectual property covering the resulting TCR-T cells. 2seventy bio aims to commence the MAGE A-4 TCR program in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macao, and the benefits this could mean for patients.
Academic Partnerships
In order to support the development of our research projects, we have built an international scientific network through partnerships. Academic and clinical contacts and collaborations have been established with leading hospitals and institutions in Europe and in North America, such as:
Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité), Germany:
Partner for planned investigator-initiated trial (IIT) with TCR-Ts
Max-Delbrück-Centre for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft (MDC):
Partner for planned investigator-initiated trial (IIT) with TCRs
University Hospital Oslo, Norway:
Trial center for Medigene’s completed Phase I/II trial with DC-vaccines
Helmholtz Munich
Medigene Immunotherapies GmbH fused with Trianta, a spin-off of the Helmholtz Munich and is keeping this strong relationship for nearly a decade. Multiple projects are included in the collaboration that encompasses projects on tools co-developed by partners at the Helmholtz and Medigene that result in shared knowhow, partially exclusive to Medigene for development of TCR-T therapies (like the add-on PD1-41BB or CD40L-CD28).
Technical University Munich
Medigene Immunotherapies GmbH has a long-standing collaboration with the Department of Genome-Oriented Bioinformatics of Technical University Munich, initiated in 2014 at the time of the establishment of Medigene Immunotherapies GmbH. One focus in the collaboration is the co-development of tools for target identification and peptide HLA-binding. Additionally, some of the tools are shared with the scientific community, i.e. Expitope 3.0.
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Medigene Immunotherapies GmbH has entered a joint collaboration with the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology of the Center for Cancer Research at the NCI, headed by Dr. Lawrence Samelson. The focus in the collaboration is to evaluate the potential of Medigene’s proprietary T cell receptors (TCRs) to be used in new cell constructs for the treatment of solid tumors.