AstraZeneca acquires EsoBiotec – Here’s why it matters

Global biopharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is about to purchase EsoBiotec, a biotechnology company pioneering in vivo cell therapies with promising early clinical activity, in order to advance its own ambitions in this area.

As it happens, AstraZeneca has just entered into a definitive agreement to acquire EsoBiotec, together with its Engineered NanoBody Lentiviral (ENaBL) platform, which empowers the immune system to attack cancers, according to the biopharma company’s press release from March 17.

This way, the platform could provide more patients with wider access to transformative cell therapy treatments delivered in a matter of minutes, instead of the current process that demands weeks in a situation when time is of the extreme essence.

Specifically, ENaBL employs highly targeted lentiviruses (a type of retrovirus) to transfer genetic instructions to specific immune cells (like T cells), which program them to identify and annihilate tumor cells for cancer treatment or autoreactive cells for possible use in immune-mediated diseases.

Advancing cancer treatment

This way, medical staff can administer cell therapies through a simple IV injection, and without the need for immune cell depletion, which usually takes weeks at a time.

Traditionally, cell therapies required the removal of cells from the patients, their genetic modification outside the body, and then readministering them to the patients as a medicine after immune cell depletion. 

Engineering immune cells directly within the patients’ bodies, the EsoBiotec in vivo approach may solve many challenges in traditional cell therapies, including high complexity and extended manufacturing timelines, thus increasing access for patients.

Commenting on the development, Susan Galbraith, Executive Vice President of Oncology Hematology R&D at AstraZeneca, explained what this acquisition, which will make EsoBiotec a wholly owned subsidiary of AstraZeneca, with operations in Belgium, means for patients:

“We believe it has the potential to transform cell therapy and will enable us to scale these innovative treatments so that many more patients around the world can access them.”

At the same time, EsoBiotec’s CEO Jean-Pierre Latere, said that combining the companies’ expertise and resources will facilitate the acceleration of the “development of our in vivo platform which has a novel delivery technology we believe will have broad therapeutic applicability.”

Meanwhile, scientists have managed to molecularly examine nerve cells in both healthy tissue and pancreatic cancer in mice, allowing them to expose the hidden neurons hindering cancer treatment, with potentially massive implications for cancer patients.