TCR2 Therapeutics’ endgame was always to manufacture its T-cell therapies in-house. But while it works on its own commercial facilities, it’s getting a little help from Boston-area neighbor ElevateBio. The duo inked a manufacturing deal under which TCR2 will use ElevateBio’s centralized R&D and manufacturing site to produce TC-210, its mesothelin-targeting T-cell treatment, for a phase 2 study.
“We had decided early on—and we continue to do this—that we will need to do our own manufacturing, but in the interim, we would take that partnering route because it’s an efficient use of capital,” said TCR2 Therapeutics CEO Garry Menzel, Ph.D.
The company already has a site in Stevenage, U.K., where it will make TC-110, a treatment for blood cancers, Menzel said. But it wants to set up a manufacturing site for its solid tumor treatments in the U.S.
TCR2’s pipeline is built on its TRuC technology, which is designed to go where other engineered T-cell approaches, such as CAR-T or T-cell receptor therapies, cannot. TC-210 is in the dose-escalation part of a phase 1/2 study. TCR2 reported early data in June from one patient with ovarian cancer and four patients with mesothelioma, a cancer of the mesothelium, the thin tissue that lines the lung, chest wall and abdomen. The ElevateBio partnership will help TCR2 ramp up manufacturing of the treatment for the trial’s phase 2 portion of the study.
Manufacturing is a major bottleneck in cell and gene therapy, with many young companies relying on contract development and manufacturing organizations to produce their treatments. It’s the reason Mitch Finer, Ph.D., the former chief scientific officer of bluebird bio, set up ElevateBio with his MPM Capital colleagues Vikas Sinha and David Hallal.
“Most companies … don’t have the ability to invest in your own manufacturing facility at an early stage. Bluebird didn’t build one until eight or nine years into the game,” Finer said in a previous interview. Instead, companies would outsource manufacturing until they raised larger private rounds or went public: “They’d raise $100 million, $150 million, spending at least two-thirds of that building a facility for one product.”
ElevateBio launched with $150 million in May 2019 to build a group of companies centered on cell and gene therapies. It has since raised another $170 million and unveiled two portfolio companies, AlloVir and HighPassBio, which use BaseCamp, ElevateBio’s centralized site, along with its R&D, manufacturing and clinical development teams. It also struck a 10-year deal with Massachusetts General Hospital to manufacture cell and gene therapies coming out of its research labs.
Though it’s not a traditional CDMO, ElevateBio is opening BaseCamp up to “selected strategic partners.” TCR2 is the first corporate partnership outside its own portfolio companies that ElevateBio has disclosed, a spokeswoman confirmed.