270 ink T-cell partnership with Chinese biotech; Antisense drug causes brain side effect — report – Endpoints News

2seventy bio has secured an I/O agreement with a Chinese biotechnology company.

The Bluebird bio spinout, which was formed last year, announced Thursday morning an agreement with JW Therapeutics to assemble a therapy platform to accelerate T-cell-based immunotherapy products for China, Macao and Hong Kong.

The first focus of the collaboration is 2seventy bio’s TCR program called Mage-A4, which focused on solid tumors and is currently being developed as part of a previous collaboration with Regeneron.

As part of the agreement, 2seventy will grant JW Therapeutics a license for MAGE-A4 cell therapy in China, Hong Kong and Macao. JW Therapeutics will be responsible for development, production and commercialization in China. However, 2seventy will still have access to receive milestones and royalties on product revenue and have access to JW’s clinical data to “support development in other geographies.”

2seventy had to raise $170 million earlier this year to stay afloat.

Antisense oligonucleotide drug reportedly causes fluid accumulation in the brain

Antisense oligonucleotides – a class of drugs that use small pieces of DNA or RNA to bind to specific molecules of RNA – were first thought of in the 1960s and 1970s to target hard-to-treat diseases, and took decades to come one past the FDA.

Now the field may face a setback.

according to New York Times on Wednesday, a personalized drug was given to a young girl named Valerie Schenkel in September 2020 for a rare form of epilepsy due to a mutation in the KCNT1 gene. The drug, called valeriasis, caused fluid to build up in Valerie’s brain, a side effect called hydrocephalus. Schenkel died in September 2021, one month after doctors found the liquid.

The only other patient to take the drug, Lucy Greenblott, received the drug in 2021. Greenblott had the same effect less than two months later, and nearly died from it, prompting doctors to implant a shunt to drain that fluid.

The side effect was reported Sunday at the American Neurological Association meeting in Chicago, according to times, notes that it is a blow for that niche field.

“I think it’s worth saying: No doubt facing hydrocephalus has been a setback, sobering and important,” said Timothy Yu, the neurologist who created the drug. Times.