Ipsen and Marengo Therapeutics are expanding a deal to include two trispecific antibody assets that tackle so-called cold tumors, which do not typically respond well to immunotherapies.
The companies said Friday that the new deal could be worth up to a total of $1.2 billion in upfront and milestone payments, plus potential royalties. This deal builds on a T cell engager collaboration in which Ipsen paid $45 million upfront and promised up to $1.6 billion in milestones in 2022.
Marengo and Ipsen told Endpoints News that the deal includes two assets but declined to disclose the upfront payment.
T cell engagers are antibody-based therapies that come with two arms: one that locks onto tumor cells, and another that brings in a T cell. The idea is that by bringing the two together, the body’s immune system will kill the cancer.
A trispecific still follows those principles but includes two branches that latch onto different targets on a T cell. Marengo’s trispecifics target the T cell receptors called Vβ6 and Vβ10.
“T cell engagers with CD3 — it’s like the big gun with a rubber bullet,” Marengo CEO Zhen Su said in an interview. “Finally, we can offer them a real bullet.”
Marengo is developing T cell engagers that it hopes can boost the quality of T cells and durability of the therapy compared to current T cell engagers. While typical T cell engagers target a T cell protein called CD3, Marengo hopes that by targeting the Vβ receptors, it can select for and boost a specific subset of T cells that are more fit to kill tumor cells.
“There’s 1 trillion T cells. There’s no way they are all created equal,” he said.
The Cambridge, MA-based biotech announced in April that Ipsen had nominated the first clinical drug candidate from their 2022 partnership. The company is also studying a wholly owned solid tumor treatment candidate in a Phase 1/2 trial.