AstraZeneca has recently been investing heavily in the cell therapy space, including two acquisitions for TeneoTwo and Gracell Biotechnologies.
AstraZeneca is fronting $425 million, with an additional $575 million on the line to acquire Belgium-based EsoBiotec and its cell therapy-focused pipeline and platform, according to a news release on Monday.
The buyout, which the companies expect to close in the second quarter, is in line with the pharma’s vision of leveraging cell therapies—alongside other “transformative technologies” such as radioconjugates and gene editors—to drive its growth.
Monday’s acquisition, once complete, will boost AstraZeneca’s cell therapy capabilities through EsoBiotec’s ENaBL platform, which uses lentiviral vectors in an attempt to gain high cell-type specificity and avoid the body’s immune response. These vectors will deliver a genetic payload that can, in turn, reprogram immune cells, boosting their function.
The potential differentiating factor for AstraZeneca in the buy is that ENaBL cell therapies can engineer a patient’s immune cells inside their bodies, without the need to harvest these cells or to subject patients through lengthy lymphodepletion procedures. According to Monday’s news release, such an approach could create off-the-shelf therapies that are more affordable and acceptable for patients.
AstraZeneca did not specify what its priority indications are for the EsoBiotec acquisition, only noting that the ENaBL platform will help develop cell therapies “for cancer treatment or autoreactive cells for potential use in immune-mediated diseases.” The extra $575 million pays off on hitting development and regulatory milestones.
AstraZeneca is a relative latecomer to the cell therapy space and has had to play catch-up through big-ticket deals in the past few years. In June 2022, for instance, the pharma acquired TeneoTwo in a potential $1.27 billion deal, giving it ownership over the T cell engager TNB-486, which has since been renamed as AZD0486 and leads AstraZeneca’s cell therapy push.
According to the pharma’s pipeline page, AZD0486 is in a Phase III study for follicular lymphoma and in a Phase II trial for B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The pharma is also running two early-stage studies for the asset in relapsed or refractory B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and in B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
More than a year after the TeneoTwo buy, AstraZeneca made another major cell therapy play when it dropped $1 billion upfront in December 2023 to buy Gracell Biotechnologies. This deal gave the pharma GC012F, now called AZD0120, an investigational CAR T therapy that targets the CD19 and BCMA proteins and which is being developed for multiple myeloma and systemic lupus erythematosus.
AstraZeneca has also made other deals in the space, including a $245 million pact with Cellectis in November 2023 and a potential $2 billion contract with Quell Therapeutics in June 2023.
