Astellas Inks Potential $800M Deal With Kelonia For In Vivo Gene Delivery Tech

Pictured: Astellas Americas Headquarters Illinois/iStock, JHVEPhoto

Astellas Pharma, through its subsidiary Xyphos Biosciences, on Thursday entered into a research and licensing agreement with Boston-based Kelonia Therapeutics to develop new immune-based cancer therapies.

Under the terms of the agreement, Astellas and Kelonia will work on two oncology programs, although the companies have not yet disclosed their specific goals. Astellas will pay $40 million for the first program and an additional $35 million for the second program.

Kelonia will also be eligible for $800 million in contingency payments and other funding for research and development it conducts under the partnership. If the partnership produces a marketable product, the Boston biotech company will also be entitled to royalties equal to a double-digit percentage of net sales.

Adam Pearson, chief strategy officer of Astellas, said in a statement that the partnership would highlight "synergies" between the platforms of subsidiary Xyphos and Kelonia. Pearson noted that Kelonia's "elegant and advanced in vivo delivery technology," called the in vivo gene positioning system (iGPS), will help Astellas expand its in vivo CAR-T cell cancer treatment portfolio.

Kelonia's iGPS, the subject of Thursday's agreement, packages genetic payloads into next-generation lentiviral vectors, enabling efficient delivery to target tissues and cells. According to the biotech company's website, iGPS is designed to be affordable and can modify cells in a patient's body to express a therapeutic protein.

The collaboration will combine Kelonia's iGPS technologies with Xyphos' ACCEL and ConvertibleCAR technologies, which use a synthetic biology approach to create flexible cell therapies that can be "designed and redesigned inside the body," the site says. The platform allows Xyphos to target multiple tumor antigens, opening up additional opportunities to "mobilize immune cells to seek out and kill target tumor cells."

Astellas' agreement to expand its CAR-T portfolio comes amid increased FDA scrutiny of this class of drugs. In November 2023, the regulator announced it was studying CAR-T therapy after reports of secondary malignancies in treated patients. In January 2024, the FDA advocated for a class-wide warning for these treatments.

Two FDA officials detailed the study last month in the New England Journal of Medicine , noting that the agency reported 22 secondary malignancies. In three of these cases, the CAR transgene was detected in the malignant clone.

Tristan Manalac is a freelance science writer based in Metro Manila, Philippines. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at tristan@tristanmanalac.com or tristan.manalac@biospace.com.