Mersana Therapeutics and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited announced that they have entered a new strategic partnership granting Takeda rights to Mersana’s lead product candidate, XMT-1522, outside the United States and Canada. The deal also expands an existing collaboration between the companies to provide Takeda with additional access to Mersana’s Fleximer® antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) platform and grants Mersana an option at the end of Phase 1 to co-develop and co-commercialize one of these programs in the United States. In addition, the companies will co-develop new payloads for use with ADCs.
XMT-1522 is an investigational, Fleximer-based ADC therapy that targets HER2-expressing tumors, including breast, gastric and non-small cell lung cancers. Preclinical data suggest that XMT-1522 may have anti-tumor activity in patients with HER2 low-expressing cancers as well as in patients with HER2 high-expressing cancers that do not respond to currently available HER2-targeting therapies. Mersana anticipates filing an Investigational New Drug application (IND) for XMT-1522 with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in mid-2016.