Genentech, a subsidiary of Roche, just established a deal today with a biotech by the name of Repertoire Immune Medicines to use its DECODE platform technology to develop T-cell targeted immune medicines for the treatment of patients with autoimmune disorders. This is a good deal for Repertoire, because it is in line to potentially receive a large sum of payments over time if it can successfully develop bispecific T-cell receptors (TCRs) that are going to be able to provide a huge boost in treating these patients.
With this deal being done, it is eligible to earn an upfront payment of $35 million. With additional development, regulatory and commercial milestones are expected of up to $730 million. I believe that this is a good deal for it because it allows it to obtain immediate cash to fund other clinical candidates from its pipeline. Plus, you have the typical addition of tiered royalties to be received upon the drug being marketed.
Not only that, but it doesn’t have to do a lot of work. It is only expected to handle discovery activities of TCR candidates that could be used to treat patients with autoimmune disorders. From there, Genentech is the one that’s going to be responsible for handling preclinical and clinical development. Along with any global commercialization that is likely going to be needed should a drug from this program eventually be approved for marketing.
The science is highly ideal because the premise of the DECODE platform is to specifically decode the immune synapse. This immune synapse is a link between a T-cell and an antigen-presenting cell. T-cells on their surface have T-cell receptors that recognize a certain peptide fragment of an antigen, known as epitope. This epitope is presented on the antigen presenting cell by a molecule known as human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecules. The problem is that there are a multitude of HLA molecules, and it is hard to specifically target certain ones.
The gist of this is that each HLA molecule activates different parts of the immune system, which makes it complex to navigate. In comes in the DECODE platform, which is responsible for targeting disease-relevant epitopes across all HLAs. This is believed to provide the ability to decode the entire immune synapse and fully understand immunological function for a specific disease.
The bottom line is that both Repertoire and Genentech could end up developing strong TCR candidates capable of doing extremely well in targeting patients with autoimmune disorders; however, this remains to be seen in discovery. This isn’t Repertoire’s first rodeo in developing a deal with big pharma.
Back in April of 2024, it established a deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb as part of a multi-year strategic collaboration to develop tolerizing vaccines for the targeting of three autoimmune disorder targets. The end-game goal of this partnership is to develop medicines that aim to reset the immune system in these patients. Under the terms of this deal, Repertoire received an upfront payment of $65 million and then up to $1.8 billion for the achievement of the typical development, regulatory and commercial milestones. In addition to the receiving of tiered royalties on net sales for any products sold.
