Germany-based BioNTech SE has taken steps to strengthen its position in personalised cancer therapies with the acquisition of Neon Therapeutics Inc of the US for $67 million. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company was founded in 2015 by experts in neoantigen biology. The company’s lead product, NEO-PTC-01, is a personalised neoantigen-targeted T cell therapy posed to enter Phase 1 in patients with metastatic melanoma who are refractory to checkpoint inhibitors. Neoantigens are newly formed antigens that have not been previously recognised by the immune system.
