Astellas Pharma and Poseida Therapeutics have announced a strategic investment to support Poseida’s commitment to redefining cancer cell therapy.

Under the terms of the agreement, Astellas will invest a total of $50m, including $25m to acquire 8,333,333 in shares of the common stock of Poseida, as well as a one-time $25m payment for a right of exclusive negotiation and the first refusal to licence one of Poseida’s clinical stage programmes.

In oncology, Poseida’s research and development of cell and gene therapies for cancer and rare genetic diseases provides a broad pipeline of allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy product candidates for solid and liquid tumours.

This includes P-MUC1C-ALL01, an allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy that is currently in phase 1 development for multiple solid tumour indications.

The company has provided Astellas with a board observer seat to allow it to attend scientific advisory board meetings, as well as certain notice rights related to any potential change of control.

As part of the investment deal, Astellas has established a ‘Focus Area Approach’ for its research development strategy, including a primary focus on immune-oncology.

Adam Pearson, chief strategy officer at Astellas, said: “We believe that this investment fits strategically with our long-term vision of expanding our capability in immuno-oncology and will ultimately lead to the development of new therapeutics for patients in need of cancer immunotherapy.”

Mark Gergen, chief executive officer at Poseida, said: "This investment further validates the potential of our proprietary genetic engineering technology platform and cell therapy approach, and we look forward to working with Astellas to advance our shared vision and explore future opportunities for collaboration to further unlock that potential."

The investment follows Astellas securing a research collaboration and licence agreement with PeptiDream last month to discover new novel protein degraders for two targets, with the deal potentially generating more than $290m in milestone payments.

Poseida announced a strategic global collaboration with Roche Therapeutics in August 2022 for the development of P-BCMA- ALL01, an allogenic CAR-T product candidate being developed to target relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma that is currently in phase 1 clinical stage development.

Reference：
https://www.pmlive.com/pharma_news/astellas_invests_$50m_to_support_advancement_of_poseidas_cancer_cell_therapy_1496015