Precision BioSciences and Tiziana Life Sciences partner on foralumab

Precision BioSciences (Nasdaq: DTIL) and UK biotech Tiziana Life Sciences (LSE: TILS) have entered an exclusive license agreement to explore Tiziana's foralumab, a fully human anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody (MAb), as an agent to induce tolerance of allogeneic CAR-T cells to potentially improve the clinical outcome of CAR-T cell therapy.

The news pushed Tiziana’s shares up 15.6% to 71.12 pence by early afternoon London trading, while Precision closed up 9% yesterday and gained a further 4.5% to $14.30 in pre-market activity today.

The Cluster of Differentiation (CD) 3 is a receptor on effector T cells and an anti-CD3 antibody, such as foralumab, has the potential to eliminate or tolerize patient effector T cells. Precision's manufacturing process, which uses ARCUS to knock out the TRAC gene and implements a CD3-depletion step, produces allogeneic CAR-T candidates that are >99.9% CD3-negative. Thus, an anti-CD3 antibody, such as foralumab, might be used to enable the CAR-T cells to expand, proliferate, and persist to maximize long term clinical benefits.