Repertoire® Immune Medicines and Bristol Myers Squibb Announce Multi-Year Strategic Collaboration to Develop Tolerizing Vaccines for Autoimmune Diseases

Collaboration combines Repertoire's industry leading DECODE™ platform that uniquely maps the immune synapse to develop T cell targeted immune medicines with Bristol Myers Squibb's world-leading expertise in developing and commercializing innovative immune medicines

Repertoire will receive an upfront payment of $65 million and is eligible to receive up to $1.8 billion in milestone and other payments and tiered royalties

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Repertoire^® Immune Medicines, a biotechnology company pioneering the discovery and development of programmable T cell targeted immune medicines, announced today that it has entered a multi-year strategic collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) to develop tolerizing vaccines for up to three autoimmune diseases. The collaboration aims to develop efficacious, selective, and durable treatments for patients suffering from autoimmune disease by resetting the immune system.

Under the terms of the agreement, Repertoire will receive an upfront payment of $65 million, and up to $1.8 billion for achieving development, regulatory and commercial milestones in addition to receiving tiered royalties.

Repertoire will lead all activities through to development candidate nomination, while BMS will lead clinical development, regulatory affairs, and commercialization of the tolerizing vaccines under an exclusive world-wide license. Repertoire will utilize its T cell receptor (TCR)-epitope discovery platform, DECODE, and its proprietary lipid nanoparticle delivery technology to discover and develop the tolerizing vaccine development candidates. In addition, it will deploy DECODE to monitor immune responses to the tolerizing vaccines in patients during clinical development to provide key insights into the pharmacodynamic effect of the vaccines.

"This agreement is a recognition of the transformative power of Repertoire's DECODE platform to discover and develop programmable T cell targeted immune medicines," said Torben Straight Nissen, Ph.D., CEO of Repertoire and Executive Partner of Flagship Pioneering. "We are excited to collaborate with Bristol Myers Squibb to combine their leadership in immunology with our unique ability to discover key disease-associated epitopes in patients with autoimmune diseases. This collaboration enables us to serve patients suffering from autoimmune diseases by translating our DECODE discoveries into potentially transformative medicines that address the underlying cause of their disease."     

"Bristol Myers Squibb strives to change the treatment paradigm for patients with autoimmune and immune-mediated diseases with a commitment to the discovery and development of transformational medicines," said Francisco Ramírez-Valle, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president and head of the Immunology & Cardiovascular Thematic Research Center at Bristol Myers Squibb. "Our collaboration with Repertoire aims to selectively reset the immune system, reflecting a key component of our immunology research strategy, which we believe may offer long term benefit while mitigating unintended consequences associated with broad immune suppression."

About Repertoire^® Immune Medicines

Repertoire Immune Medicines is a biotechnology company dedicated to creating treatments for diseases based on the power of the human T cell repertoire to eliminate cancer cells, target pathogens, and regulate immune function in autoimmune disease.

The company's proprietary DECODE™ platform provides a comprehensive understanding of the interactions between T cell receptors and their antigens in disease. DECODE uniquely elucidates the entire immune synapse, including the T-cell receptor-epitope pairs that defines it, the HLA context, and the T cell phenotype. This capability enables the creation of new and potentially transformative classes of immune-based medicines. Repertoire believes the ability to decipher these interactions represents one of the greatest opportunities for innovation in medical science. The company is utilizing the discoveries from DECODE to design and develop novel immune therapies for multiple therapeutic areas, such as autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, and cancer.

Repertoire was founded in 2019 by Flagship Pioneering. Its team operates from sites in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Zurich. To learn more about Repertoire, please visit our website: www.repertoire.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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SOURCE Repertoire Immune Medicines