Celgene and Jounce Therapeutics announce new collaboration

Celgene and Jounce Therapeutics have announced a new cancer-focused research collaboration in the field of immuno-oncology.

The partnership will focus on developing and commercialising innovative immuno-oncology treatments, encompassing options on Jounce's lead product candidate JTX-2011 and up to four early-stage programmes to be selected from a defined pool of B-cell, T regulatory cell and tumour-associated macrophage targets from the Jounce Translational Science Platform.

An additional option to equally share a checkpoint immuno-oncology programme will also be included in the deal. Subsequent to the exercising of these options, Jounce will lead global development and US commercialisation for JTX-2011 and one additional collaboration programme.

Jounce will receive an upfront payment of $225 million (170.52 million pounds), a $36 million equity investment and up to an additional $2.3 billion in future milestone payments across the lifetime of the collaboration.

Dr Robert Hershberg, chief scientific officer at Celgene, said: "This collaboration allows both companies to leverage broad capabilities in immuno-oncology to bring forward a new generation of product candidates for cancer patients."

Earlier this month, Celgene's Revlimid was approved in Europe for the treatment of mantle cell lymphoma, marking the sixth new Celgene product or indication approved by the European Commission in the last 18 months.