Rocatinlimab

TScan has told Fierce that its pipeline strategy remains unchanged despite Amgen walking away from a Crohn’s disease collaboration that had the potential for a windfall of half a billion dollars. The Big Pharma paid TScan $30 million upfront back in May 2023 as part of the pact to use the biotech's target discovery platform, TargetScan, to identify antigens recognized by T cells in patients with Crohn’s disease. The plan was for Amgen to evaluate a range of modalities to create therapies based on targets discovered by TScan, who would be eligible for development, regulatory and commercial milestones that could potentially top $500 million. Raymond Deshaies, Ph.D., then Amgen’s senior vice president of global research, said at the time that TScan's platform “provides a best-in-class approach to identify non-conventional drug targets to enable the development of potential first-in-class therapeutics.” But Amgen has now walked away from the deal, TScan revealed in an Aug. 18 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, noting that the partnership will officially end on Nov. 10. A spokesperson for the Big Pharma told Fierce that it had called time on the collaboration “following a strategic review of our portfolio and research priorities.” The move follows Amgen's decision to terminate its rocatinlimab collaboration with Kyowa Kirin in January, five years after paying $400 million for rights to the autoimmune disease drug candidate. While TScan has had to accept that the half-a-billion biobucks payday from Amgen is now forever out of reach, the biotech told Fierce that the overall impact of the pharma's decision should be minimal. “We were responsible for target discovery of novel T-cell antigens in Crohn’s disease, so this termination does not impact any of the TScan pipelines,” Caileigh Dougherty, TScan’s head of corporate communications, told Fierce. “There are no planned changes to our wholly owned programs as a result of the Amgen collaboration being terminated.” TScan’s pipeline largely centers around blood cancers and solid tumors, with its lead T cell receptor-engineered T cell candidate recently entering a phase 3 trial for patients with acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes who have received a bone marrow transplant. TScan hit the scene in 2019 with the goal of finding new opportunities for T-cell therapies. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based biotech went public in 2021 months, after securing a $100 million series C. The biotech has since fallen on harder times , cancelling a phase 1 solid tumor trial and laying off 30% of its employees in November 2025. As of the end of June , TScan had $100.2 million in the bank, enough to fund the company through the second quarter of next year.