Intrexon & ZIOPHARM Amend Exclusive Channel Collaborations

Intrexon Corporation and ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc. recently announced amendments to their Exclusive Channel Collaborations (ECCs) in the fields of oncology and graft-versus-host-disease (GvHD) to improve alignment between both companies as ZIOPHARM broadens its pipeline and advances multiple therapeutic programs into the clinic. The new structure is intended to facilitate increased investment in clinical development by ZIOPHARM, including the execution of pivotal studies, across a number of cellular and gene therapies that it employs.

“Intrexon is engaged in an array of collaborations with a wide variety of partners. Our goal is always to work together to create value for both Intrexon shareholders and the shareholders of our collaborators. As these relationships mature, business needs and conditions can evolve and create new opportunities. In the case of ZIOPHARM and the tremendous prospects they possess with their cellular and gene based approaches within oncology, both companies saw an opportunity to adjust the terms of our relationship for mutual benefit,” said Geno Germano, President of Intrexon.

“Intrexon and ZIOPHARM are integral partners, working closely together to create innovative and more efficacious therapies for the treatment of cancer and GvHD toward the ultimate goal of finding cures. By amending the terms of our collaborations, ZIOPHARM is better positioned to advance its immunotherapy assets from first-in-human trials to eventual commercialization,” added Laurence Cooper, MD, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of ZIOPHARM.

Already with three active trials at leading institutions, two utilizing controlled gene therapy to express a powerful anti-cancer effector in interleukin-12 and the other incorporating the innovative non-viral Sleeping Beauty gene delivery system in chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy (CAR-T) for advanced lymphoid malignancies, ZIOPHARM has positioned itself to meaningfully expand its clinical programs through the remainder of 2016 and over the course of 2017. For the current year, these will include viral CAR-T for myeloid malignancies, natural killer (NK) cells for acute myeloid leukemia, and for the first time a combination approach with Ad-RTS-hIL-12 used in conjunction with checkpoint inhibitors.

Additionally, ZIOPHARM and Intrexon continue to advance preclinical efforts leveraging the Sleeping Beauty platform, the clinical-stage RheoSwitch (RTS), and cell manufacturing for the clinical applications of T cells engineered to express CAR and TCR, as well as off-the-shelf approaches in NK and other cell types. Employing novel cell engineering techniques and multigenic programs, the collaboration has progressed next-generation non-viral adoptive cellular therapies based on designer cytokines and CARs under control of RheoSwitch technology targeting both hematologic and solid tumor malignancies. Many of these initiatives benefit from the companies’ ongoing collaboration with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, which facilitates a faster and more cost-effective approach to move these promising treatments from the bench to the clinic.

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ZIOPHARM Oncology is a Boston, MA-based biotechnology company employing novel gene expression, control, and cell technologies to deliver safe, effective, and scalable cell- and viral-based therapies for the treatment of cancer. The company’s immuno-oncology programs, in collaboration with Intrexon Corporation and the MD Anderson Cancer Center, include chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) and other adoptive cell-based approaches that use non-viral gene transfer methods for broad scalability. The company is advancing programs in multiple stages of development together with Intrexon Corporation’s RheoSwitch Therapeutic System technology, a switch to turn on and off, and precisely modulate, gene expression in order to improve therapeutic index. The company’s pipeline includes a number of cell-based therapeutics in both clinical and preclinical testing, which are focused on hematologic and solid tumor malignancies.