Affimed's shares jump on cancer drug development deal with Roche's Genentech unit

Shares in Affimed surged 140 percent after the company announced an agreement with Roche's Genentech unit to develop and commercialise NK cell engager-based immunotherapeutics to treat multiple cancers. The deal, which could potentially be worth more than $5 billion, includes an initial upfront payment and other near-term committed funding to Affimed of $96 million. 

"This collaboration is based on Affimed's innate immune cell drug discovery and development expertise and our team's deep understanding of cancer immunology," remarked James Sabry, Roche's global head of partnering. Under the deal, Affimed will apply its redirected optimised cell killing (ROCK) platform to discover and advance innate immune cell engager-based immunotherapeutics of interest to Genentech.

Affimed indicated that the collaboration includes candidate products generated from its ROCK platform, as well as a number of undisclosed solid and haematologic tumour targets. The companies will jointly work on the discovery, early research and late-stage research phases, while Genentech will be responsible for clinical development and commercialisation worldwide.

Adi Hoess, chief executive at Affimed, stated "this strategic partnership marks an important step on our path to leverage the full potential of innate immune cells in oncology." According to Affimed, the ROCK platform enables the production of "first-in-class, tetravalent, multi-specific immune cell engagers." Specifically, it said the platform permits the antibody engineering of customisable NK and T cell engagers to generate clinical candidates for various diseases, including agents against oncology targets "to address the limitations of existing treatments of haematologic and solid tumours."

In other recent deals, Roche reached an agreement last month worth up to $1 billion to use PureTech Health's exosome platform technology designed to facilitate the oral administration of antisense oligonucleotides. Roche also entered into a deal in June worth potentially over $500 million to jointly develop inflammatory bowel disease drugs with Microbiotica. 

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