Sanofi and Innate Pharma agree immuno-oncology alliance

Sanofi and Innate Pharma are to work together to develop new bispecific natural killer (NK) cell engagers for use in immuno-oncology applications.

The companies will apply Innate Pharma's new proprietary technology to the development of innovative bispecific antibody formats engaging NK cells to kill tumour cells through the activating receptor NKp46.

An activating receptor expressed on all NK cells, NKp46 It is the most specific marker of human NK cells and plays a major role in their tumour cell recognition.

Work will involve the generation and evaluation of up to two bispecific NK cell engagers using technology from Innate Pharma and Sanofi's proprietary bispecific antibody format, as well as tumour targets.

Sanofi will be responsible for the development, manufacturing and commercialisation of products resulting from the collaboration, with Innate Pharma eligible to up to 400 million euros (299.12 million pounds) in milestone payments, as well as royalties on net sales.

Gary Nabel, chief scientific officer at Sanofi, said: "Working with Innate Pharma, we seek to create new bispecific antibodies that will focus the immune system to kill cancer cells by engaging natural killer cells."