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Roche is acquiring its cell therapy and genomic medicines partner Poseida Therapeutics, the companies said Tuesday morning. The Basel-based pharma giant will pay $9 per share in upfront cash, giving Poseida an equity value of about $1 billion. If certain therapies enter pivotal studies and get commercialized, Poseida’s shareholders could get up to an additional $4 per share. Poseida’s shares $PSTX skyrocketed 224% after the opening bell, rising slightly above the $9 buyout price. Roche also said Tuesday morning that its drug tiragolumab failed a late-stage cancer study, dealing another blow to the TIGIT field. The Swiss drugmaker appears to have wanted to scoop up Poseida well in advance of having to dish out more money. The duo linked arms in August 2022 in a partnership that could have been worth up to $6 billion . That’s if all milestones were met, a rare feat in drug R&D. Roche had already delivered $80 million in milestones so far this year, but it dropped an option for one of Poseida’s CAR-Ts in September. “We do really think this is only the beginning. And when you think about it this way, then the answer becomes almost a foregone conclusion that there is so much complementarity, there is so much potential, we should become one,” Aviv Regev, head of research and early development at Genentech, said in an interview with Endpoints News . Regev said Poseida will continue its partnership with Astellas, which had done a $50 million equity investment in the company and paid $50 million upfront, with more than $500 million in additional payments on the line. Another Tokyo-based drugmaker, Takeda, had dropped its alliance with Poseida in the summer of 2023. Poseida has about 350 employees , Roche said. The teams have been working together for about two years, so “the relationships are all in place,” Regev said. “We plan to keep the site in San Diego for the foreseeable future,” she added. “There will be a large team there” that does both research and clinical manufacturing. Roche is getting access to a pipeline of off-the-shelf CAR-T therapies, meaning they derive from donors rather than the patient themselves, unlike most of the approved cell therapies. The biotech is working on blood cancers, solid tumors, autoimmune diseases and neurology. Poseida has presented some clinical data in multiple myeloma. It will also move into multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus, Regev said, with IND filings recently submitted. Poseida focuses on stem cell memory T cells, which are the “ideal type for allogeneic cell therapies,” former CEO Mark Gergen previously said. “Roche’s global capabilities in late-stage development and commercialization will enable patients worldwide to benefit from the transformative potential of allo CAR-T,” Poseida CEO Kristin Yarema said in a press release. Beyond its multiple cell therapies already being tested in humans, the San Diego biotech is also working on preclinical non-viral genomic medicines for hereditary angioedema and hemophilia A. Roche adjusted its work in the cell therapy field earlier this year. Its Genentech unit had broken off a different off-the-shelf pact, saying goodbye to Adaptimmune and their work on αβ T cell therapies and αβ T cell receptors. Meanwhile, Roche ended development of an autologous TCR-based T cell therapy with partner Adaptive Biotechnologies in April, a Roche spokesperson said in an email, but it “will continue to work with Adaptive on T cell therapies.” Roche’s broad cell therapy work also touches ophthalmology, where it’s in Phase 2 with partner Lineage Cell Therapeutics . The Poseida deal marks a trio of acquisitions for Roche this fall. It bought Regor’s CDK inhibitors for $850 million upfront and paid an undisclosed amount for Wnt agonism-focused AntlerA and the startup’s suite of preclinical candidates in ophthalmology. It also completed its multibillion-dollar acquisition of obesity biotech Carmot Therapeutics at the beginning of the year. Will Roche buy more of its partners? “Every particular partnership is its own special snowflake, so then you can’t generalize,” Regev said. Roche and Poseida anticipate their deal will close in the first quarter. Editor’s note: This story was updated to include details from an interview with Genentech executive Aviv Regev.

Roche has announced that it will be acquiring Poseida Therapeutics in a deal worth $1.5bn, giving the company access to a range of cell therapy candidates and related platform technologies. The definitive agreement builds on the companies’ existing partnership to develop off-the-shelf, or allogeneic, CAR-T cell therapies for patients with haematological malignancies. Roche will now gain access to Poseida’s portfolio of pre-clinical and clinical allogeneic CAR-T therapies across several therapeutic areas, such as solid tumours and autoimmune disease. This includes the biopharma’s lead programme, P-BCMA-ALLO1, which has already received Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy and Orphan Drug Designations from the US Food and Drug Administration for certain cases of multiple myeloma. Poseida shared promising results from a phase 1 study of the BCMA-targeting candidate in September. The data presented at this year’s International Myeloma Society Annual Meeting demonstrated a 91% overall response rate (ORR) in the 23 heavily-pretreated relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma patients in an optimised lymphodepletion arm, with a 100% ORR in BCMA-naïve patients. Levi Garraway, head of product development and chief medical officer at Roche, said: “This exciting acquisition will allow us to drive further progress in allogeneic cell therapy while leveraging the successful existing partnership with Poseida. “We are very encouraged by the early clinical data, and this acquisition builds on our joint progress to catalyse the development of potentially first and best-in-class cell therapies in oncology, immunology and neurology.” Under the terms of the agreement, Roche will acquire all outstanding shares of Poseida common stock for $9 per share at closing plus a non-tradeable contingent value right to receive certain milestone payments of up to $4 per share, representing a total equity value of approximately $1bn and a total deal value of up to $1.5bn. The announcement comes just two months after Roche’s Genentech unit agreed to pay Regor Pharmaceuticals $850m upfront to acquire the biotech’s portfolio of next-generation CDK inhibitors for breast cancer. Roche also entered into an agreement worth over $1.8bn with Flare Therapeutics earlier this month to discover small molecule treatments aimed at previously undrugged transcription factor targets in oncology.