Benzinga | Nov 10, 2021 08:22AM EST

Secarna Pharmaceuticals, Achilles Therapeutics Sign Research, Option And License Agreement To Develop Optimized T Cell Therapies; Terms Not Disclosed

Secarna Pharmaceuticals GmbH & Co. KG ("Secarna"), a biopharmaceutical company focusing on the discovery and development of next-generation antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) therapies to address challenging or previously undruggable targets, today announced that the Company has entered into a research, option and license agreement with Achilles Therapeutics UK Limited ("Achilles"), a member of the Achilles Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ:ACHL) group of companies, in the field of immune oncology.

Secarna will employ its commercially validated discovery and development platform, LNAplusTM, to generate ASO candidates against selected targets that potentially play a central role in the ex vivo optimization of personalized T cell therapies being developed by Achilles. Following in vitro testing performed by Secarna, Achilles will conduct production feasibility and optimization testing.

Under the terms of the agreement, Secarna will receive an undisclosed upfront payment, a target-based technology access fee as well as option exercise fees. Secarna is also eligible to receive development and commercial milestone payments as well as tiered royalties on net sales of personalized T cell therapies developed and commercialized under this collaboration.

"We are excited to collaborate with Achilles and jointly work on a highly innovative approach to optimize T cell therapies with our LNAplusTM-based ASOs," said Alexander Gebauer, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of Secarna Pharmaceuticals. "By combining our industry-leading antisense oligonucleotide platform with Achilles' expertise in the field of T cell therapies, we see the potential to break new ground in the treatment of cancer patients."

About Secarna's proprietary drug discovery and development platform, LNAplus(TM)

Secarna's proprietary, customized LNAplusTM platform is being applied to the discovery, testing and selection of antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) for pre-clinical and clinical development. LNAplusTM encompasses all aspects of drug discovery and pre-clinical development and has proven to be fast, reliable, scalable and efficient, enabling the discovery of novel antisense-based therapies for challenging or currently undruggable targets.The platform includes the powerful proprietary OligofyerTM bioinformatics pipeline, a streamlined, high efficiency screening process, including Secarna's proprietary LNA-Vit(r)oxTM safety test system, as well as target-specific functional assays. Secarna's platform and ASOs have been validated by numerous in-house projects as well as in several academic and industry collaborations.