MD Anderson Forms New Company with Immatics to Develop Cellular Therapies

After securing more than $60 million in funding from Immatics Biotechnologies GmbH (Immatics) and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center announced it will join with Immatics in a brand-new venture: the formation of Immatics US. Immatics US will harness its XPRESIDENT platform to discover novel cancer targets in the development of new adoptive cellular therapies and T-cell receptor-based approaches for the treatment of cancerous tumors.

The new company will benefit from the use of platforms developed at or licensed to MD Anderson, including the use of cytokine IL-21 for T-cell expansion and a gamma-delta T-cell platform for allogeneic cell therapies. Immatics proper also brings to the joint company venture expertise in the ex-vivo expansion of a patient’s endogenous T cells, capabilities related to the genetic engineering of a patient’s T cells to express novel T-cell receptors specific to targets identified through the XPRESIDENT platform, and knowledge about the engineering of off-the-shelf T cells so that they express novel T-cell receptors.

The announcement comes just one day after the news that Immatics will partner with MorphoSys to access several tumor-associated peptides (TUMAPs) discovered using Immatics' XPRESIDENT platform for the development of new antibody-based treatments against these targets in a number of solid and blood cancers. According to MorphoSys, it has more than one hundred antibody drug candidates in development.