Cellectis rockets on gene-editing alliance with AstraZeneca

Shares in Cellectis shot up this morning after the French biotech revealed a wide-ranging alliance with AstraZeneca, which includes $245 million in near-term financial commitments.

According to the partners, the collaboration will focus on using Cellectis’ gene-editing platform and manufacturing capabilities to design cell and gene therapy products, with AZ reserving rights to 25 genetic targets, of which 10 could be explored for development.

AZ will plough $105 million into the collaboration before the end of the year, in the form of a $25 million cash payment and $80 million equity investment that will give it around 22% ownership of Cellectis. Another $140 million could be forthcoming in early 2024, including another equity investment that could raise AZ’s stake to 44%.

While still in the early stages, the biotech could be in line for between $70 million and $220 million in milestones for each of the 10 proposed development programmes plus royalties.

Shares in the biotech – which has developed a gene-editing platform based on the use of TAL nucleases or TALENs that bind and cleave DNA sequences at selected sites – were up more than 190% at the time of writing.

Cellectis is using the technology to create off-the-shelf cell therapies, with three candidates – UCART22 for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (AML), UCART123 for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and UCART20x22 for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in clinical trials. The AZ deal does cover any of those programmes.

“The differentiated capabilities Cellectis has in gene editing and manufacturing complement our in-house expertise and investments made in the past year,” said AZ’s chief strategy officer, Marc Dunoyer.

He added that the group “continues to advance our ambition in cell therapy for oncology and autoimmune diseases as well as in genomic medicine, which has potential to be transformative for patients with rare diseases.”

AZ’s other transactions in this area of late include a $2 billion-plus partnership with Quell Therapeutics focused on T-regulatory (Treg) cell therapies for autoimmune diseases, a non-exclusive gene-editing collaboration with PerkinElmer’s Revvity unit, and the acquisition of gene editing specialist LogicBio Therapeutics for around $68 million.