Atreca, Xencor to develop T Cell engaging bispecific antibody

Atreca (BCEL) and Xencor (XNCR) announced, as part of their existing strategic collaboration, they have mutually selected the first program combining an Atreca-discovered antibody with Xencor’s XmAb bispecific Fc domain and a cytotoxic T-cell binding domain, CD3. Under the terms of their 2020 collaboration, Atreca generates novel, tumor-binding antibodies from the immune responses of cancer patients and identifies the antibodies’ targets. Xencor then engineers Atreca’s antibodies into T-cell engaging bispecific antibodies that bind to and activate the CD3 co-receptor on T cells, and characterizes these novel XmAb bispecific antibodies to identify candidates for further development. The program announced today is the first of up to two joint programs that can be mutually selected for further development and commercialization, with each partner sharing 50% of costs and profits. Atreca will lead clinical development, regulatory and commercialization activities for this program, and the second potential joint program would be advanced by Xencor. In addition, the agreement allows for each partner to pursue up to two programs arising out of the collaboration independently. "The advancement of this program into joint development is a key milestone in our collaboration with Xencor," said Stephen Gould, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Atreca. "We continue to believe that our respective approaches have the potential to be highly complementary, given the abundance of novel antibody-target pairs generated by Atreca’s discovery platform and the plug-and-play nature of Xencor’s XmAb bispecific antibody platform. We are excited to continue working with Xencor to advance this program and generate additional programs combining Atreca antibodies and Xencor CD3 bispecific engineering."