Amgen already has an antibody platform, and the technology has produced FDA-approved drugs, as well as more therapeutic candidates that are still under development.But at Teneobio, Amgen saw an attractive antibody drug discovery and development alternative technology, the pharmaceutical giant has agreed to pay 900 million US dollars for get The entire company.
The cash amount is an advance payment. According to the terms of the transaction announced after the close on Tuesday, Teneobio’s shareholders could receive up to $1.6 billion in revenue based on the achievement of unspecified milestones. According to Amgen, Teneobio’s capabilities will help the Thousand Oaks, California-based pharmaceutical giant develop new molecules with the potential to treat multiple diseases.
Amgen’s antibody technology BiTE (abbreviation for bispecific T cell adapter) produces a drug composed of two antibodies, one that binds to an antigen on the tumor and the other binds to CD3 (a protein on T cells). Teneobio has also developed a bispecific T cell adaptor, and Amgen says this technology will complement BiTE. But Teneobio has an additional technology, TeneoSeek, for the development of multispecific antibodies, which the company calls “UniAbs.” The biotechnology company said that TeneoSeek can quickly identify a large number of unique binding molecules for specific therapeutic targets. According to Teneobio, this technology can produce multispecific therapeutic proteins that can target multiple targets, which is a step beyond the currently available antibody drugs.
“Teneobio’s antibody platform complements our existing capabilities and may provide us with more diverse building blocks that can be developed into new multispecific therapies,” said David Reese, Executive Vice President of Amgen Research and Development, in a report. “In addition, the availability of Teneobio’s CD3 participation technology will allow us to expand our ability to generate bispecificity and use our own technology to tailor the T cell participation domain of molecules to diseases and targets.”
The Teneobio pipeline includes bispecific and multispecific antibody drugs, some of which are being developed in collaboration with other companies. GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen are Teneobio’s partners to develop multispecific antibodies against cancer. Through a subsidiary called TeneoOne, Teneobio has also formed an alliance with AbbVie to focus on the development of the bispecific antibody TNB-383B against multiple myeloma. last month, AbbVie reached an agreement to acquire the subsidiary TeneoOne and its Phase 2 treatment candidates.
The subsidiary is developing several Teneobio projects.According to a Regulatory filing, Teneobio will spin off three of them before the Amgen acquisition is completed. These subsidiaries are TeneoTwo, which is developing a bispecific antibody against CD18 on tumor cells and CD3 on T cells; TeneoFour is developing an anti-CD38 heavy chain antibody to block a protein called CD38 Enzyme function; TeneoTen is developing bispecific antibodies against hepatitis B surface antigen and CD3.
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