Cue Biopharma Reels In $374M through Merck R&D Pact
Giant, Merck — which has an R&D team that is built to progress its PD-1 drug Keytruda — has now chosen to partner up with the new-wave Cambridge, MA company, Cue Biopharma.
Merck is acquiring an interest in Cue Biopharma work using biologics to target T cell receptors to assist with patients’ immune systems beat cancer and autoimmune diseases. The Cue platform was originally developed in Almo’s lab at the Albert Einstein College, and its first investment was from the National Institutes of Health.
Cue focuses on second-generation immuno-oncology. Its technology is designed to fuse engineered T-cell costimulatory signaling molecules (ligands) with a T-cell receptor targeting complex (peptide-MHC) on a traditional scaffold of an antibody. The second-generation part is that it is similar to CAR-T but by way of a molecule instead of an engineering process.
The biotech company says it has developed a “highly productive platform for designing biologic drugs that generate tailored immune responses from disease-relevant T cell populations by emulating the signals, or cues, delivered by the body’s antigen presenting cells.”
Under the deal, the company’s CUE Biologics platform will be used to develop biologics that would be engineered to selectively modulate
disease-relevant T-cell subsets for the treatment of autoimmune diseases.The multi-year partnership will include a wide range of disease targets across certain primary disease indication areas.
With the completion of the transaction, Cue Biopharma will receive an up-front payment and be eligible to receive up to $374m in research, development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments in addition to tiered royalties on sales, if all pre-specified milestones associated with multiple products across the primary disease indication areas are achieved.
The company’s lead drug candidate is CUE-101, which is designed to target and activate T cells specific to HPV-related cancers, such as cervical, head and neck, and genital cancers.
In a statement, the company said, “We have developed a proprietary platform for the design and development of CUE Biologics for in vivo (in the patient’s body) T cell-based immunotherapy. In the context of cancer, CUE Biologics are designed to selectively activate disease-associated T cells to proliferate and attack tumor cells. For the treatment of autoimmune diseases, CUE Biologics are designed to selectively ablate disease-associated T cell responses directed against self-tissue.”
