Celyad grants Novartis a non-exclusive license

Belgian biotech firm Celyad (Euronext Brussels: CYAD) has signed a non-exclusive license agreement with Novartis (NOVN: VX) for Celyad’s US patents for the production of allogeneic CAR-T cells.

This agreement is related to two targets currently under development by Novartis, which (along with Kite) is also in the race to bring the first CAR-T therapy to market, with its Biologics License Application for CTL019 already under priority review at the US Food and Drug Administration. News of the deal pushed Celyad’s share up 10.7% to 32.48 euros by late-morning trading today.

The agreement includes Celyad’s intellectual property rights under US Patent No 9,181,527 related to allogeneic human primary T-Cells that are engineered to be T-Cell receptor (TCR) deficient and express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR). The granted claims are not limited to specific CARs or specific methods of generating allogeneic CAR T- cells, such as genome editing or genetic engineering.