Regeneron teams up with Sheba Medical Center to accelerate oncology clinical research
The US biotech will also sponsor Sheba's Accelerate, Redesign and Collaborate (ARC) innovation center, which comprises a ‘personalized medicine’ development hub.
Regeneron will also join Sheba’s HealthTech Valley, a global ecosystem focusing on redesigning healthcare by bringing together academia, industry, and medicine.
A collaboration between Sheba and Swiss CDMO, Lonza, which began in 2019, has the objective of translating Sheba’s manual process to Lonza’s CAR-T cell platform, Cocoon. The process aims to decrease manufacturing costs, reduce footprint, lower the risk of manufacturing failures, and minimize turnaround time. Sheba’s process was successfully translated into the Cocoon Platform in 2020, with the first patient dosed with CD19 CAR-T cell immunotherapy during the second half of 2020, following a successful clinical comparability study.
David Weinreich, executive vice president, Global Clinical Development, Regeneron, commented on the tie-up: “As we work to turn innovative science into needed medicines, we will partner with centers of excellence like Sheba that have established best practice clinical trial processes.”
Professor Yitshak Kreiss, director general of Sheba Medical Center, said the partnership will help accelerate clinical research and enhance patient access to novel treatments: “The agreement exemplifies our mutual desire to improve patient outcomes with an emphasis on creating a better quality of life.”
Regeneron, headquartered in Westchester County, New York, says its ability to translate science repeatedly and consistently into medicine has led to nine FDA-approved treatments and numerous product candidates in development. Its pipeline targets eye diseases, allergic and inflammatory diseases, cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, hematologic conditions, infectious diseases, and rare diseases.
Its oncology portfolio is built around two foundational approaches – its approved PD-1 inhibitor Libtayo and investigational bispecific antibodies – which are being evaluated both as monotherapies and in combination with emerging therapeutic modalities. The company says they provide it with the flexibility to develop potentially synergistic treatments for a wide range of solid tumors and blood cancers.
