Takeda tapped Maverick Therapeutics and its T-cell engager platform in early 2017 to create new treatments for previously undruggable cancer targets. The $125 million deal also had a 5-year buyout option, which Takeda is now exercising for an undisclosed upfront fee and up to $525 million in development and regulatory milestones.
Takeda will pick up Maverick’s COBRA platform and the pipeline the company has built around it, including lead candidate MVC-101, now known as TAK-186, which is in a phase 1/2 study in solid tumors that express EGFR. The Japanese pharma will also get its hands on MVC-280, now TAK-280, which is poised to enter the clinic in patients with B7H3-expressing solid tumors. Takeda expects to begin that trial in the second half of its 2021 financial year, which runs from April 2021 to March 2022.
The duo expects to wrap the deal in the April to June time frame, the companies said in a statement Tuesday. Upon closing, Maverick employees will become part of Takeda’s R&D unit.
The COBRA platform is designed to work only in the tumor microenvironment, so treatments can zero in on various kinds of solid tumors while sparing healthy tissues. This sets Maverick’s approach apart from standard T-cell engager treatments that are given systemically.
“Collaboration is paramount to our R&D strategy and our pursuit of novel approaches to treat cancer,” said Chris Arendt, Ph.D., head of the oncology therapeutic area unit at Takeda, in a statement.
“Maverick’s cutting-edge COBRA platform is an exciting addition to our oncology portfolio that provides a novel conditional bioengineering approach to advance redirected immunotherapies against solid tumors,” Arendt added.
The acquisition comes barely a week after Takeda regained the global rights to soticlestat, a drug it had farmed out to Ovid Therapeutics for clinical development. Ovid took the lead on developing it for a group of rare epilepsies, including Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, taking it through phase 2 before Takeda took it back for $196 million upfront.