Intellia Therapeutics, Inc., a genome editing company focused on developing curative therapeutics using CRISPR/Cas9 technology both in vivo and ex vivo, announced an expansion of its existing cell therapy collaboration with Novartis, to include the ex vivo development of innovative cell therapies using certain ocular stem cells. As part of the updated collaboration terms, Novartis will have the right to develop CRISPR/Cas9-based products for one or more targets using these stem cells. Intellia will receive a one-time $10 million cash payment and, consistent with the original collaboration agreement, Intellia also is eligible to receive downstream success-based milestones and royalties.
With the collaboration expansion announced today, Intellia will gain expanded rights to Novartis’ lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology for all genome editing applications in both in vivo and ex vivo settings. This licensed LNP technology is the foundation of Intellia’s proprietary modular delivery system of CRISPR/Cas9 for its in vivo product pipeline. Intellia retains rights to all other in vivo and ex vivo applications of CRISPR/Cas9, including for eye disorders, subject to certain in vivo target selection options by Novartis set forth in the original agreement.
“Genome editing enhancements made by CRISPR/Cas9 will enable the next generation of cell therapies. With our collaborator, Novartis, we are broadening the ex vivo application of our CRISPR/Cas9 technology from hematopoietic stem cells, or HSCs, to ocular stem cells. We are pleased to expand our relationship with Novartis, and to continue to work together to develop cell therapies,” said Intellia President and Chief Executive Officer John Leonard, M.D. “Broader rights to Novartis’ LNP technology will assist our efforts to apply this technology in ex vivo settings for the development of proprietary cell therapies, just as we have done to develop our proprietary modular delivery system for in vivo products in the liver and other organs.”
About the Novartis/Intellia Agreement
Under the terms of the original agreement, Novartis received exclusive rights to develop all collaboration programs focused on engineered chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CARTs), while both companies committed to advancing their respective hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) programs. The work of these preclinical programs, including for sickle cell disease, is ongoing. The discovery and development collaboration, including the updates announced today, is set to expire in December 2019.
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