Astellas Buys Xyphos

Astellas buys Xyphos.
  
Astellas Pharmaceuticals buys Xyphos Biosciences for up to $655 million including potential development milestones.
   
Xyphos is focused on the creation and development of immuno-oncology therapeutics aimed to use the power of our immune system to cure cancer. Xyphos' ACCEL (Advanced Cellular Control through Engineered Ligands) tech platform allows new ways to activate and control immune cells to find and destroy precisely targeted cells in our body. The platform enables our immune cells to be relayed by bispecific antibodies or to be re-programmed to express a flexible Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR). This tech enables the exclusive or preferred class delivery of single or multiple steering and modulating agents, including bispecific antibodies, cytokines, and kill functions. Resulting convertibleCAR-cells can be guided to tumor cells and tumor destruction can be controlled from outside the CAR-cell.
   
Kenji Yasukawa of Astellas said: ‘At Astellas, immuno-oncology is a primary focus of our research and development strategy, and we are working on the development of next-generation cancer immunotherapy using new modalities/technologies. The innovative tech in development at Xyphos fits in advancing our immuno-oncology strategy to create and deliver value for patients. Combining this tech with our capabilities in cell therapy we have been working on so far, we can create next-generation high-function cells and maximize the value of our tech. We look forward to working with Xyphos' superb team to advance and expand their clinical development programs to bring their novel therapeutics to patients.’
   
James Knighton of Xyphos said: ‘At Xyphos, we advance our innovative cell therapy technology platform as an exciting new approach to potentially manage and cure cancer. Astellas' commitment to immuno-oncology makes them an ideal partner to advance our proprietary NKG2D-based NK-cell and T-cell platform to the next stage of clinical exploration. Further, we look forward to becoming part of Astellas to speed up this immuno-oncology research and development in the vibrant South San Francisco community.’
   
Locust Walk served as financial advisor to Xyphos Biosciences. Cooley served as legal advisor.

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