A large family-owned drugmaker in Germany plans to shell out more than $350 million to buy a cancer vaccine maker in Switzerland.
Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim said Monday it would spend up to 325 million euros – or $364.5 million – to acquire Geneva-based Amal Therapeutics, also a privately owned company. The deal includes an upfront payment and up to 100 million euros in milestone payments.
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Amal’s lead product candidate is ATP128, a therapeutic cancer vaccine that has been in preclinical development and is expected to start first-in-human clinical trials in Stage IV colorectal cancer later this month. The company describes its immunization platform, KISIMA, as being able to turn a “cold tumor” into a “hot tumor,” meaning one that can be infiltrated with immune cells.
“Acquiring Amal is part of Boehringer Ingelheim’s long-term strategy to enhance our existing position as an innovator of novel cancer therapies, including immuno-oncology treatments, which leverage cutting-edge scientific discoveries and their applications,” Boehringer Ingelheim board member Michel Pairet said in a statement. “We want to pioneer new paradigms of biology-based care for cancer patients, and the technologies and expertise developed at Amal are critical to our efforts.”
The acquisition is part of a broader expansion by the German drugmaker into cancer immunotherapy. In September 2018, it put up 210 million euros – $235.5 million – to acquire Innsbruck, Austria-based ViraTherapeutics, which had been developing an oncolytic viral therapy called VSV-GP, consisting of a vesicular stomatitis virus with modified glycoprotein. And last April, Boehringer Ingelheim formed a partnership with Nantes, France-based OSE Immunotherapeutics to develop OSE-172, an immune checkpoint inhibitor that targets SIRP-alpha. A Phase I trial of the drug, now known as BI 765063, dosed its first patient last month.
To date, only one cancer vaccine has Food and Drug Administration approval in the U.S., namely Dendreon’s Provenge (sipuleucel-T) in advanced prostate cancer. The first oncolytic virus to receive FDA approval was Amgen’s Imlygic (talimogene laherparepvec), or T-VEC, for melanoma, in 2015.
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