Lyell Immunopharma, a cell therapy developer that has struggled to match its high profile, has acquired a biotech startup and streamlined its research to focus on a range of cancer cell immunotherapies. There is.
The company announced Thursday that it has reached an agreement to acquire ImmPact Bio, a cell therapy startup focused on cancer and autoimmune diseases, for $30 million in cash and 37.5 million Lyell shares. ImmPact shareholders will receive an additional 12.5 million shares of Lyell stock in the transaction, subject to certain milestones, as well as a portion of sales royalties if the startup’s lead therapy is brought to market. There is a possibility.
Lyell is also paring down its pipeline to focus on what the company calls its most “differentiated” programs, including its experimental treatment for solid tumors and its ImmPact blood cancers in clinical trials. It also includes treatment. The company is discontinuing research into different types of cell therapies, as well as previous solid tumor treatments. Lyell currently expects its financial runway to last until 2027.
For Lyell, the move comes as the company looks to turn around. Lyell was founded by two co-founders of Juno Therapeutics, a cell therapy company that Celgene acquired before it was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb. The company has raised nearly $1 billion from some of the same investors that backed Juno, including Arch Venture Partners. It then held an initial public offering of $425 million in 2021. This is one of the largest biotech initial public offerings since 2018, according to data from BioPharma Dive.
Lyell floated a cash-on plan to advance the cell therapy field beyond the few blood cancers for which CAR-T products are approved to treat. The company’s core technology aims to enhance various properties of T cells, theoretically allowing its treatments to target additional tumors or be more powerful than existing treatments.
However, the company has struggled to prove its claims since going public. The company lost its partnership with GSK in 2022 and laid off a quarter of its workforce a year later. One of the company’s main treatments, a blood cancer cell therapy called LYL797, faced safety issues and did not have a “sufficiently broad therapeutic window,” CEO Lynn Seely said. He said this in a conference call Thursday. The second, so-called tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy in a melanoma test, did not meet the company’s “pre-defined rigorous criteria for continued development,” Lyell said in a statement.
The company’s stock, which debuted at $17 per share in 2021, was worth about $1.10 as of Thursday’s market close.
Lyell executives are betting on Thursday’s reset to change the company’s direction. Despite the high hurdles set for lymphoma cell therapies such as Gilead’s Yescarta and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Breyanzi, Lyell believes that the treatments it is acquiring from ImmPact are It claimed that it showed the potential to deliver superior results in trials. Dr. Lyell presented early data from his program, IMPT-314, at this year’s medical conference, a pivotal trial in people who have had at least two prior treatments and have not yet received CAR-T treatment. is scheduled to start in 2025.
ImmPact had developed the technology behind IMPT-314 for B-cell lymphoma and autoimmune diseases. This area of research has recently attracted the interest of many cell therapy developers. But Professor Lyell prioritizes IMPT-314’s potential in blood cancers.
“It’s clearly different from the approved CAR T-cell therapies,” Seeley said on a conference call. “We believe that gives us an opportunity to take market share.”
Lyell is also eyeing a new version of LYL797, which it says may have better effects at lower doses. The treatment, called LYL119, has a “broader” therapeutic window than previous treatments and should be safer, Seeley told analysts.
The company plans to begin enrolling patients with ovarian or endometrial cancer in the study this year or early next year.
