Second Innate Pharma NK cell engager selected by Sanofi

Shares of Innate Pharma (Euronext Paris: IPH) shot up as much as 10% in an initial reaction to its announcement that French pharma major Sanofi (Euronext: SAN) has made the decision to progress IPH6401/SAR’514 into investigational new drug (IND)-enabling studies, triggering a 3 million-euro ($3.1 million) milestone payment. The stock later fell back.

Under the original deal in 2016, Innate Pharma became eligible for up to 400 million in development and commercial milestone payments as well as royalties.

IPH6401/SAR’514 is a BCMA-targeting NK cell engager using Sanofi’s proprietary CROSSODILE multi-functional platform, which comprises the Cross-Over-Dual-Variable-Domain (CODV) format. It induces a dual targeting of the NK activating receptors, NKp46 and CD16, for an optimized NK cell activation, based on Innate’s ANKET (antibody-based NK cell Engager Therapeutics) proprietary platform. NK cell engagers are an alternative for cancer treatment aiming to offer an improved therapeutic window as compared to bispecific T lymphocyte-engaging formats.