- Celiac disease program added to 2012 alliance addressing immune
disorders related to
food and airborne allergens - Selecta eligible to receive payments totaling up to $300 million as
well as up to double digit tiered royalties on product sales of immune
tolerance product for each program under the alliance
Company Website:
http://www.selectabio.com/
WATERTOWN, Mass. -- (Business Wire)
Selecta
Biosciences, Inc., a clinical stage biotechnology company developing
a novel class of targeted antigen-specific immune therapies, today
announced that, under the terms of an existing strategic global
collaboration, Sanofi (EURONEXT: SAN and NYSE: SNY) has exercised its
option to an exclusive license to develop an immunotherapy for the
treatment of celiac disease.
In celiac disease patients, the consumption of gluten-containing food
induces harmful immune responses that can lead to abdominal pain and, in
most severe cases, intestinal cancer. This new immune tolerance program
expands activities within the Sanofi-Selecta collaboration, which is
already successfully advancing a novel immunotherapy for a
life-threatening food allergy. The products resulting from this
collaboration will leverage Selecta’s proprietary Synthetic Vaccine
Particle (SVP™) platform, which has unique capabilities to engineer
nanoparticles with the structure and composition to produce immune
tolerance by attenuating the overactive response to specific antigens.
“Sanofi and Selecta are working together to push toward the outer
barriers of immunotherapy to deliver innovative solutions to patients.
This area is constantly evolving, and with partners like Selecta,
breakthrough medicines may be within our grasp,” said Kurt Stoeckli,
Vice President and Head of Biotherapeutics, Research & Development at
Sanofi.
Under the terms of the collaboration, Selecta is eligible to receive
research support and several pre-clinical, clinical, regulatory and
sales milestones totaling up to $300 million for this new program in
celiac disease. Additionally, Selecta is also entitled to up to double
digit tiered royalties as percentage of product net sales for any
commercialized immunotherapy resulting from these efforts with Sanofi.
“We are very pleased that Sanofi and Selecta are now collaborating on
three programs for immune tolerance,” said Werner Cautreels, PhD,
Selecta’s President and CEO. “Both Sanofi and Selecta recognize the
tremendous unmet medical needs in addressing the adverse immune
responses leading to allergies and autoimmune diseases.”
In November 2012, Selecta announced that they had formed a strategic
global collaboration to discover highly targeted, antigen-specific
immunotherapies for life threatening allergies. Under the agreement,
Sanofi obtained a first exclusive license to develop an immunotherapy
designed to abate acute immune responses against a life threatening food
allergen and an option to develop two additional candidate
immunotherapies for allergies and celiac disease. With the exercise of
this option by Sanofi, Selecta and Sanofi now have two initiatives
actively advancing immune tolerance treatments under the terms of the
2012 agreement. In October 2014, Selecta and JDRF announced another
collaboration with Sanofi to research novel antigen-specific immune
therapies for Type 1 Diabetes.
About Celiac Disease
Celiac Disease is a gluten induced chronic inflammatory disorder of the
small bowel affecting approximately 1% of the population in the US and
Europe causing a wide range of symptoms including diarrhea, abdominal
pain, weight loss, and hypoproteinemia. Severe forms of the disease can
lead to small intestinal adenocarcinoma. Gluten-free diet, the only
available treatment option, is ineffective in approximately 30% of
patients, has low compliance, and impairs quality of life in affected
patients. The SVP program for celiac disease is aimed at rebalancing the
immune response specifically to gluten without affecting other functions
of the immune system.
About Selecta
Selecta
Biosciences, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company
developing novel drugs that use immune modulating nanomedicines to
generate targeted antigen-specific immune responses to prevent and treat
disease. Selecta’s proprietary Synthetic Vaccine Particle (SVP)
platform creates a novel paradigm in immunotherapeutics and vaccines,
enabling completely new applications while offering the potential of
improved efficacy and safety profiles.
Selecta’s immunomodulatory
SVPs can induce antigen-specific immune tolerance, enabling them to
be applied in a variety of therapeutic areas with large unmet medical
need. The company is focused on three key near-term applications:
inhibition of immunogenicity of biologic therapies, treatment of
allergies, and treatment of autoimmune diseases. Immumogenicity
adversely affects the safety and efficacy profile for many biological
therapies, and is known to have caused the termination of a number of
promising biological therapies in clinical development. Selecta’s SVP is
a product engine that has the potential to unlock the full therapeutic
value of biologic therapies.
Through proprietary products and collaborations with leading
pharmaceutical companies and research organizations, Selecta is building
a pipeline
of product candidates to address unmet medical needs in serious and
chronic diseases. Selecta Biosciences, Inc. is based in Watertown,
Massachusetts, USA. For more information, please visit www.selectabio.com.
Contacts:
For Selecta Media:
The Yates Network
Kathryn Morris,
+1-845-635-9828
kathryn@theyatesnetwork.com
or
For
Selecta Investors:
Stern Investor Relations, Inc.
Stephanie
Ascher, +1-212-362-1200
stephanie@sternir.com
Source: Selecta Biosciences, Inc.
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