$1.8 Billion Collaboration Developing Tolerizing Vaccines for Autoimmune Diseases

Repertoire® Immune Medicines announced today that it has entered a multi-year strategic collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb to develop tolerizing vaccines for up to three autoimmune diseases.

Repertoire is developing tolerizing vaccines as a new class of programmable medicines for patients with autoimmune diseases.

These vaccines have the potential to re-establish immune homeostasis, leading to durable disease remission in the absence of generalized immune suppression, thereby overcoming the limitations of today's medicines and transforming the lives of patients who have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.

The collaboration aims to develop efficacious, selective, and durable treatments for patients suffering from autoimmune disease by resetting the immune system.

Repertoire will lead all activities through to development candidate nomination, while BMS will lead clinical development, regulatory affairs, and commercialization of the tolerizing vaccines under an exclusive worldwide license.

Repertoire will utilize its T cell receptor (TCR)-epitope discovery platform, DECODE, and its proprietary lipid nanoparticle delivery technology to discover and develop the tolerizing vaccine development candidates.

In addition, it will deploy DECODE to monitor immune responses to the tolerizing vaccines in patients during clinical development to provide key insights into the pharmacodynamic effect of the vaccines.

"This agreement is a recognition of the transformative power of Repertoire's DECODE platform to discover and develop programmable T cell targeted immune medicines," said Torben Straight Nissen, Ph.D., CEO of Repertoire and Executive Partner of Flagship Pioneering, in a press release on April 29, 2024.

"We are excited to collaborate with Bristol Myers Squibb to combine their leadership in immunology with our unique ability to discover key disease-associated epitopes in patients with autoimmune diseases. This collaboration enables us to serve patients suffering from autoimmune diseases by translating our DECODE discoveries into potentially transformative medicines that address the underlying cause of their disease." 

Under the terms of the agreement, Repertoire will receive an upfront payment of $65 million and up to $1.8 billion for achieving development, regulatory, and commercial milestones in addition to receiving tiered royalties.