Beam Therapeutics Licenses SIRION Biotech’s LentiBOOST Technology

SIRION Biotech GmbH recently announced that Beam Therapeutics licensed rights to use SIRION Biotech’s LentiBOOST for use in their CAR-T cell products.

CAR-T cell therapy represents a promising and future-defining shift in cancer treatment. Beam Therapeutics is developing a new generation of CAR-T product candidates using its proprietary base editing technology.

Under the terms of this agreement, SIRION agreed to provide Beam with non-exclusive access to its proprietary lentiviral transduction enhancer LentiBOOST for clinical development and commercialization of Beam’s portfolio of CAR-T programs. SIRION will be entitled to undisclosed upfront and milestone payments and is eligible to receive royalties on future product net sales plus license fees tied to commercial success.

Dr. Christian Thirion, CEO and Founder of SIRION Biotech GmbH, explains “LentiBOOST was engineered to improve lentiviral transduction of difficult cell types like T-cells and hematopoietic stem cells. This technology enables robust upscaling of the T-cell production process, and helps to reduce manufacturing costs by lowering the amount of lentiviral vectors needed for production of the cell product while at the same time improving clinical efficacy by increasing vector copy numbers (VCN) per cell. We are delighted that the LentiBOOST technology may help Beam further enhance the clinical success of its CAR-T pipeline.”

“LentiBOOST is used in an increasing number of clinical trials in the US and in Europe and the technology is more and more considered as a gold standard in manufacturing of cell products. Our non-exclusive licensing strategy makes our technology available to a wide range of companies and research hospitals to boost the efficiency of their various clinical programs,” says SVP of Business Development & Licensing, Dr. Sabine Ott.

SIRION Biotech was founded in 2005 to lead the next generation of viral vector technologies for gene and cell therapy as well as vaccine development. Now SIRION offers one of the world’s most comprehensive viral vector technology platforms based on lenti-, adeno-, and adeno-associated viruses which expedites gene therapy research and advances drug development. SIRION is becoming a partner of choice in this growing sector. LentiBOOST has been used in a number of clinical trials from early stage clinical Phase 1/2 through late-stage clinical Phase 3 trials and demonstrated clinical success in improving transduction of the therapeutic vector.