Myeloid Therapeutics has signed an exclusive collaboration deal with Prime Medicine to leverage both companies’ technologies and discover cancer and autoimmune diseases treatments.
Myeloid Therapeutics has signed an exclusive collaboration deal with Prime Medicine to leverage both companies’ technologies and discover cancer and autoimmune diseases treatments.
The partnership will optimize Myeloid’s RetroT technology, which has the capacity to deliver genetic sequences and integration enzymes in a single mRNA strand. RetroT presents the possibility of providing gene-sized DNA units into the genome and expanding the type and scope of gene errors that may be reversed in situ.
The goal of the partnership is to extend its use to multiple types of cells and enhance its efficiency and programmability so it can be directed to specific targets within the genome. Should this succeed, RetroT may be used alongside Prime Medicine’s Prime Editing technology to simplify the delivery of in vivo and ex vivo therapies for a wide range of diseases.
“At Myeloid, we are pleased to have built one of the deepest RNA-based technology platforms focused on multiple therapeutic modalities, including our newest technology announced today for gene editing, RetroT. This partnership highlights the broad applicability of our R&D engine to indications beyond cancer. We are excited to be working with Prime, a preeminent gene editing company, to continue pushing the boundaries of what mRNA can do, including gene delivery,” commented Daniel Getts, MBA, PhD, the chief executive officer of Myeloid, in a statement.
Under the terms of the deal, Prime Medicine will pay Myeloid $45 million upfront. The latter also stands to receive milestone and option exercise payments, as well as royalties from sales. Once the discovery and development efforts are translated into human clinical products, Prime will then have the exclusive option to obtain the intellectual property estate to further advance its current platform.
“We are committed to expanding our gene editing toolbox with new, uniquely positioned approaches that may complement Prime Editing. We look forward to partnering with the extremely talented team at Myeloid – including many experts in retrotransposon biology – to advance this novel technology, with the goal of expanding the applicability of Prime Editing to more broadly address human diseases,” added Keith Gottesdiener, MD, the CEO of Prime Medicine, in the same announcement.
Prime Medicine ranks seventh in Biospace’s NextGen Bio “Class of 2022" list of stellar up-and-coming life sciences firms in North America. It was launched in 2021 with initial funding and support of $315 million. Prime Editing, its primary product, functions like a DNA word processor that finds and replaces gene sequences without causing any DNA breaks. This technology was developed by David R. Liu, PhD and Andrew Anzalone, MD, PhD, its co-founders.
Meanwhile, Myeloid has several key items in its pipeline. Its candidate product for peripheral T cell lymphoma and glioblastoma is in Phase I trials, while its candidates for HER2+, liver cancer and colon, lung and breast cancer are in the Investigational New Drug stages. Its RetroT research on myeloid cell engineering and gene editing is in discovery.
