J&J takes $2.58bn option to buy in vivo CAR-T firm Sail
Johnson & Johnson has bid for a slice of the in vivo CAR-T category, signing a collaboration with Sail Biomedicines to advance its pipeline and an exclusive option to buy the company outright.
The deal – which includes initial payments of $785 million, including a $465 million equity investment, and potential milestones of $140 million – will focus initially on Sail's lead in vivo CAR-T candidate for immune-mediated disorders and developing the New Jersey biotech's platform technologies.
At the same time, J&J has claimed an exclusive option to buy Sail for an additional $2.58 billion.
Sail's lead programme is CD4 and CD8 cell-targeting CAR-T SAIL-0839, in development for autoimmune diseases, with three other candidates against undisclosed targets also under evaluation.
In vivo CAR-T is making waves in pharma because, unlike the ex vivo therapies that have revolutionised the treatment of some blood cancers, they avoid the costly and lengthy process of harvesting, modifying, and cultivating patients' own cells, as well as the need for patients to undergo aggressive lymphodepletion therapy to destroy their bone marrow before treatment.
Rather, the in vivo approach involves the direct infusion of vector particles into the patient – RNA delivered in nanoparticles in the case of Sail's platform – to engineer CAR-T cells in the body and transform CAR-T into an off-the-shelf treatment that can be used at scale across a broader patient population.
J&J's interest in Sail comes after a series of other acquisitions in the category, including Eli Lilly's $7 billion deal to buy Kelonia Therapeutics in April and $2.4 billion takeover of Orna Therapeutics in February, along with AbbVie's $2.1 billion purchase of Capstan Therapeutics and Bristol Myers Squibb's $1.5 billion play for Orbital Therapeutics last year.
J&J is already a player in conventional CAR-T therapies, having developed Carvykti (ciltacabtagene autoleucel), an ex vivo therapy for blood disorder multiple myeloma, in collaboration with Legend Biotech.
"People living with serious immune-mediated diseases continue to need treatments that can deliver deeper, more durable disease control," said John Reed, J&J's head of innovative medicine R&D.
"Sail's innovative platform represents an exciting new approach that seeks to harness the power of CAR-T therapy in a simpler, more scalable way," he added. "We aim to accelerate the development of innovative therapies that have the potential to fundamentally transform how immune-mediated diseases are treated."
Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash
