Astellas taps Poseida for second CAR-T deal focused on solid tumors

Astel­las Phar­ma is sign­ing Po­sei­da Ther­a­peu­tics to a sec­ond deal fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing off-the-shelf sol­id tu­mor cell ther­a­pies af­ter the com­pa­nies first teamed up in 2023.

An Astel­las sub­sidiary called Xyphos Bio­sciences plans to use a Po­sei­da CAR-T con­struct to de­vel­op two “con­vert­ible” CAR-T ther­a­py can­di­dates for sol­id tu­mors. Astel­las will pay Po­sei­da $50 mil­lion up­front, with an­oth­er $550 mil­lion in po­ten­tial mile­stone pay­ments. If a ther­a­py is com­mer­cial­ized, Po­sei­da could al­so re­ceive low dou­ble-dig­it roy­al­ties.

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