Collaboration between GSK and Lyell Immunopharma to develop new cancer cell therapies

GlaxoSmithKline plc has announced a five-year collaboration with Lyell Immunopharma to develop new technologies to improve cell therapies for cancer patients. The collaboration will apply Lyell’s technologies to further strengthen GSK’s cell-therapy pipeline, including GSK3377794, which targets the NY-ESO-1 antigen that is expressed across multiple cancer types.

Combining GSK’s strong cell- and gene-therapy programs with Lyell’s technologies may allow the joint research team to maximize the activity and specificity of cell therapies in solid-tumor cancers, where there is a high unmet medical need.

Next-generation engineering that leverages Lyell technologies could further enhance the benefit/risk profile of GSK’s lead program and other cell therapies in GSK’s pipeline. GSK3377794 uses genetically engineered autologous T cells and is currently in Phase 2, on an accelerated development path.

The collaboration will also build on GSK’s world-leading manufacturing platform and expertise for cell and gene therapy that delivered the world’s first approved ex-vivo gene therapy (Strimvelis) for ADA-SCID in 2016. GSK has granted patents and pending patent applications related to its stable cell line technology (SCLT) and has a long-standing collaboration with Miltenyi Biotec to improve quality and scale of output to meet the needs of larger patient populations.