Egle to receive R&D milestone payment and equity funding from Takeda
PARIS — Egle Therapeutics SAS (Egle), an emerging biotechnology company focused on developing first-in class immunotherapies targeting immune suppressor regulatory T-cells (Tregs) for oncology and autoimmune diseases, today announces that it has achieved the first milestone in its strategic research alliance with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (“Takeda”). In the course of the strategic research alliance that was announced in June 2020, Egle will validate novel tumor-infiltrating regulatory T-cell (Treg) targets against which Takeda will develop potential therapies.
Egle has leveraged its unique bioinformatic and translational capabilities to successfully identify targets that will now be pursued under the terms of the alliance. Upon achievement of the target identification, Egle will receive an R&D milestone payment and investment from Takeda.
Luc Boblet, CEO of Egle, commented “Reaching this first technical milestone marks our positive progress towards our joint goal with Takeda, of creating the next generation of differentiated immunotherapies against Tregs, and provides strong validation of the work being done at Egle. We look forward to continuing our productive alliance with Takeda while pushing further our internal programs through the equity component of the alliance.”
“We have made great progress in our collaboration with Egle and are thrilled with the speed of which we identified our first novel Treg targets,” said Loïc Vincent, Head, Oncology Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda. “We hope to build upon this momentum in the next phase of our partnership to enable and ultimately deliver new immuno-oncology therapeutic options.”
About Egle Therapeutics
Established in early 2020, as a spin-out of Institut Curie by Luc Boblet, serial biotech entrepreneur (former co-founder and CEO of PathoQuest, and former co-founder and CEO of H-Immune sold to HifiBio Therapeutics) and Dr Eliane Piaggio, PhD, renowned immunologist in the Treg / IL-2 field (INSERM Research Director, Head of the Translational Immunotherapy Team – TransImm – at Institut Curie), Egle Therapeutics is developing first-in-class immunotherapies targeting immune suppressor regulatory T cells (Tregs) for oncology and autoimmune diseases.
The key element of Egle’s core approach is the leveraging of its translational-based target discovery engine to unveil novel therapeutic Treg targets and vectorize computationally designed resurfaced cytokines acting as antagonists or as selective Treg-agonists. Egle’s flagship program pioneers dis-engagement of tumor-infiltrating Tregs through a proprietary series of IL-2 variants featuring a unique antagonism mechanism of action.