Immatics announced plans to raise about $110 million in a common stock offering following the release of promising early-stage data that supports its ACTengine technology platform.
Immatics CMO Cedrik Britten/courtesy of Immatics
Immatics announced plans to raise about $110 million in a common stock offering Monday following the release of promising early-stage data that supports its ACTengine technology platform.
Immatics, based in Houston, TX and Tuebingen, Germany, indicated it plans to sell a little over 10.9 million ordinary shares at a price of $10.09 per share. The company expects this to raise about $110 million. The offering will close on Oct. 12.
Immatics also announced interim Phase Ia clinical data of the expansion cohort A. Cohort A tested the company’s ACTengine IMA203 as a monotherapy for recurrent and/or refractory solid tumors patients using TCR-T cells directed against an HLA-A*02-presented peptide derived from PRAME (PReferentially expressed Antigen in MElanoma).
In a conference call, CEO Harpreet Singh, Ph.D., said the company’s purpose is to reach patients with high unmet needs.
“This data update today is a relevant step toward achieving this purpose and provides further clinical validation of our PRIME target and our autologous cell therapy approach,” he said.
The company’s ACTengine is described as “a personalized cell therapy approach for patients with advanced solid tumors.” Similarly to CAR T therapies, the patient’s own T-cells are collected and genetically engineered to express a novel, proprietary T-cell receptor (TCR) directed against a specific cancer target.
These modified T-cells are reinfused into the patient where they grow and attack the cancer. This approach is also called TCR-engineered cell therapy, or TCR-T.
The interim data includes 27 patients from the completed Phase Ia dose escalation portion of the study and initial data from the first five patients in the ongoing Phase Ib dose expansion cohort A. The drug continues to be well tolerated and hit confirmed objective responses across multiple solid cancers.
In the conference call, Cedrik Britten, M.D., chief medical officer, said those were “just a small fraction of the potential of targeting PRAME,” with other possible indications as well. Britten noted IMA203 has the potential to reach approximately 39,000 patients per year in the U.S. alone.
Next Steps
As the company shifts focus from Phase Ia to Phase Ib, it expects to read out meaningful data throughout 2023, including safety and response rates, as well as durability of response with a longer follow-up time.
Immatics has a strong partnership history with Bristol Myers Squibb. In June, the two companies expanded their strategic alliance to pursue the development of multiple allogeneic off-the-shelf TCR-T and/or CAR T programs. They will develop two programs owned by BMS and both companies will have an option to develop up to four more programs each.
These programs will leverage Immatics’ proprietary gamma delta T cell-derived, allogeneic Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT) platform (ACTallo) and BMS’s suite of next-generation technologies.
Under terms of the deal, BMS paid Immatics $60 million upfront in addition to up to $700 million per BMS program in various milestones.
