- WuXi Biologics and MediGene have entered a three-year collaboration to develop TCR-guided T cell engagers (TCR-TCEs) targeting difficult-to-treat tumours.
- The partnership will leverage both companies’ expertise to expedite the development process and reduce manufacturing costs.
WuXi Biologics, a global contract research, development, and manufacturing organisation (CRDMO), has announced a partnership with MediGene to develop TCR-guided T cell engagers (TCR-TCEs) for the treatment of difficult-to-treat tumours. The collaboration, set for three years, aims to design and jointly research multi-target TCR-TCEs.
Dr Chris Chen, CEO of WuXi Biologics, highlighted the strategic value of this partnership, stating, “This collaboration will further enhance our research service capabilities in our CRDMO business model and underscore our commitment to enabling global partners to speed up their novel therapy discovery and development with our leading technologies and reliable services.”
The collaboration will combine MediGene’s advanced TCR generation capabilities, known for their sensitivity, specificity, and safety, with WuXi Biologics’ anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody (mAb), its trusted collaboration environment (TCE) platform, and its WuXiBody bispecific antibody platform. These platforms are designed to address discovery and CMC (chemistry, manufacturing, and controls) barriers, potentially reducing the development timeline by six to 18 months and significantly cutting manufacturing costs.
The WuXiBody platform is specifically engineered for high expression yield, solubility, stability, and ease of purification, enabling the creation of bispecific constructs with a low risk of immunogenicity and extended in vivo half-life. Its structural flexibility allows for the assembly of various mAb sequence pairs into formats that meet diverse biological target requirements.
Selwyn Ho, CEO of MediGene, expressed optimism about the partnership, stating, “We are confident that MediGene’s known capabilities in generating potential best-in-class 3S TCRs for TCR-T cell therapies can also be applied to non-cellular modalities. As such, we are delighted to partner with WuXi Biologics with their validated anti-CD3 mAb, and its industry-leading TCE platform and WuXiBody to support our strategy to apply MediGene’s TCRs into new modalities, such as TCR-TCEs for use in patients where additional value can be created beyond TCR-T therapies, for patients and our shareholders.”
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