The cancer cell therapies previously owned by once high-flying Belgian drugmaker Lakefront Biotherapeutics have found a new home.
On Wednesday, the company — formerly known as Galapagos — announced a deal to sell those treatments to a new startup known as Armed Cell Therapeutics. That startup is also based in Belgium and chaired by Paul Stoffels, who used to run Galapagos and stepped down before it rebranded. Armed Cell is paying Lakefront 8 million euros up front, and could add up to $230 million more in the future.
The young company now takes ownership of two “armed” CAR-T therapies nearing human testing in non-Hodgkin lymphoma and small cell lung cancer, as well as three other confidential projects in early preclinical development. These assets were part of a research shift Stoffels once spearheaded.
Armed CAR-T therapies aim to evade biological resistance mechanisms that exhaust engineered cells and impede their effectiveness in solid tumors like lung cancer. The lead treatments use a mix of tools, such as multiple payloads and different types of molecular binders, to sidestep these issues.
“Our armed CAR-T programs are designed to overcome the limits of current cell therapies, from relapse in lymphoma to the suppressive environment of solid tumors,” John Mellors, the company’s chief scientific officer, said in a statement.
The transaction ends a saga for Lakefront, which renamed itself earlier this year and is focusing on autoimmune disease treatments.
As Galapagos, the company had been boosted for many years through partnerships with Gilead Sciences and AbbVie on inflammatory diseases and cystic fibrosis. With Gilead, the company won European approval of a rheumatoid arthritis drug called filgotinib. But it saw the same therapy rejected in the U.S. and another drug from that partnership fail in clinical testing. Prospects involved in the AbbVie partnership were equally unsuccessful.
Following those setbacks, co-founder Onno van de Stolpe retired as CEO, setting the stage for Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson’s former top scientist, to take the reins.
Within six months, the Stoffels-led company began investing in cell therapy, a decision that surprised Wall Street analysts at the time. The move came just as newer “bispecific antibodies” were becoming a competitive threat to cell therapies for blood cancers, raising questions about the available opportunity for newer CAR-T treatments.
Further research setbacks led to layoffs and eventually a plan to split the company in two, with one focusing solely on cell therapies and the other rebuilding a new pipeline. The company then reversed its divestment plans after Stoffels announced plans to retire, and chose to wind down the cell therapy research instead.
The deal announced Wednesday revives that work.
“I’m pleased we were able to complete this sale of the early-stage cell therapy programs as it provides a path to continue to advance these assets on behalf of patients,” said Sooin Kwon, Lakefront’s chief business officer, in a statement.
Armed Cell also announced a new CEO, Willemijn Kremer, who was Galapagos’ former vice president for cell therapy corporate development. Kremer will take over from Stoffels, who had been serving as the startup’s interim CEO.