Lyell Immunopharma Acquires ImmPACT Bio to Expand CAR T-Cell Pipeline

Lyell Immunopharma, Inc, located in South San Francisco, revealed that it has finalized a deal to purchase ImmPACT Bio USA Inc, a clinical-stage biotech company, as part of its efforts to develop advanced CAR T-cell therapies for cancer patients.

IMPT-314, ImmPACT's main initiative, is a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell product aimed at CD19/20, which Lyell plans to further progress for hematologic malignancies such as large B-cell lymphoma. IMPT-314 was created with the goal of surpassing the effectiveness of authorized CD19 CAR T-cell treatments by utilizing a dual-targeting CAR T-cell approach and enhancing CAR T-cell longevity by focusing on naïve and central memory T cells in the production process.

“Lyell’s vision is to bring meaningful and durable clinical benefit to patients suffering from cancer with our next-generation cell therapies,” stated Lynn Seely, Lyell’s president and CEO. “The emerging data from ImmPACT’s ongoing phase 1-2 trial and the phase 1 clinical data from a published UCLA-sponsored trial suggest the potential of IMPT-314 to have improved complete response rates and duration of response compared to the approved CD19 CAR T-cell therapies in CAR-naïve patients with aggressive B-cell lymphoma. Since licensing this product candidate from UCLA, the team at ImmPACT has made impressive progress in the multi-center IMPT-314 phase 1-2 clinical programme. We look forward to presenting initial data from this program at a major medical conference later this year and initiating a pivotal trial for IMPT-314 in 2025.”