13 January 2022 - - US-based biotechnology company Neogene Therapeutics, Inc has inked an exclusive, worldwide license agreement with the National Cancer Institute, an institute of the National Institutes of Health, for a portfolio of TCRs targeting KRAS and TP53 mutations for the treatment of patients with cancer, the company said.

These TCRs were discovered in the laboratory of Steven Rosenberg, M.D., Ph.D., Chief of Surgery at the NCI and a pioneer in the fields of immunotherapy and gene therapy for patients with advanced cancers.

This portfolio of TP53 and KRAS targeted T cell therapies complements Neogene's proprietary neoantigen TCR discovery and T cell engineering platform.

Neogene's platform aims to identify neoantigens and suitable TCRs to target for individual patients and enable the engineering of T cells with these neoantigen-specific TCRs for patients suffering from a broad spectrum of solid tumors.

Neogene has been granted worldwide rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize this TCR portfolio of autologous and allogeneic T cell therapy product candidates that are engineered with CRISPR technology for the treatment or prevention of cancer.

Pursuant to the terms of the license agreement, Neogene will provide an upfront payment and certain clinical, regulatory, and sales milestone payments, as well as royalties on net sales of products covered by the license.

Neogene Therapeutics, Inc. is a biotechnology company pioneering the development of next-generation, fully individualized engineered T cells therapies for a broad spectrum of cancers.

Neogene's engineered T cells target mutated proteins, or neoantigens, found in cancer cells as a consequence of cancer-associated DNA mutations.

Neoantigens render tumor cells vulnerable to detection by T cells. Neogene's proprietary technology platform aims to identify TCR genes with specificity for neoantigens from tumor biopsies.

Neogene's novel approach intends to deliver a tailored set of TCR genes for each individual patient, which will be engineered into patient-derived T cells directing them toward neoantigens in tumor cells, with the goal of providing a fully individualized engineered T cell therapy for cancer.