Alaunos Therapeutics is axing an agreement with Precigen, giving up licensing rights to a personalized T-cell platform.
The licensing agreement dates back to 2018 and centers around Precigen’s “Sleeping Beauty” transposed neoantigen T-cell receptors designed to treat solid tumors. In the original agreement, Alaunos offered up to $52.5 million biobucks, plus royalties, for each exclusively licensed program that entered late-stage clinical development and secured market approval. To date, no therapy tied to the tech has entered phase 3 testing or crossed the FDA finish line.
In April 2023, the deal was amended to scale back Alaunos’ annual licensing payments from $100,000 to $75,000. Precigen had also previously been required to pay Alaunos royalties on net sales derived from Precigen’s CAR products. The amendments last year removed any royalty obligations for both companies.
Now, Alaunos has fully terminated the deal after reviewing strategic priorities and business objectives, while also acknowledging that the patent to the non-viral gene transfer platform was going to expire in 2026, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed Oct. 10
It’s been a rough road for Alaunos, a Texas-based biotech that let go of its sole clinical-stage asset and 60% of staffers in August 2023. At the time, the company’s TCR-T cell therapy was being assessed in a phase 1/2 trial across several solid tumors, with a peek at interim data revealing an 83% disease control rate in six patients. In part, the company cited “the current financial markets” as a reason behind the clinical cull.
Now, the biotech hopes an internal small molecule oral obesity program will provide a desperately needed lifeline. Alaunos expects to launch in vitro testing by the end of the year and start activities that could allow for an investigational new drug filing in 2025.
Currently, the company is exploring strategic alternatives, including acquisition, merger, sale of assets or strategic partnerships, among others. The biotech’s cash runway is expected to last only into the first quarter of next year, according to SEC filings.
All of this follows a 2022 rebrand designed to create a blank slate for the company, formerly known as Ziopharm Oncology. The biotech hoped a new name and full pivot to T-cell therapies would erase a miserable 2021, a year defined by two rounds of layoffs and the end of an IL-12 program.
Even the 2018 Precigen pact was part of a broader move to scale back, with Alaunos (at the time Ziopharm) cutting down an earlier, wide-ranging deal to only include the single licensing agreement.