Adaptimmune goes into overdrive on news of Astellas deal

T-cell therapy company Adaptimmune Therapeutics (Nasdaq: ADAP) saw its shares close up 200% at $3.99 on Monday, having rocketed nearly 300%, on encouraging research results and the news that it has entered into a co-development and co-commercialization agreement  with Japanese pharma major Astellas Pharma (TYO: 4503) to bring new stem-cell derived allogeneic T-cell therapies to people with cancer that could be worth nearly $900 million.

Astellas and UK-based Adaptimmune will agree on up to three targets and co-develop T-cell therapy candidates directed to those targets. These targets will exclude target specific T-cell products in pre-clinical or clinical trials or those developed for other partners at Adaptimmune.

The collaboration will leverage Adaptimmune's target identification and validation capabilities for generating target-specific T-cell Receptors (TCRs), chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), and HLA-independent TCRs that recognize surface epitopes independently of the HLA profile of the tumor cell. The collaboration will also utilize Astellas’ Universal Donor Cell and Gene Editing Platform it obtained through the $120 million acquisition of Seattle-based Universal Cells, which had been collaborating with Adaptimmune.