Take­da puts $120M in near-term cash on the ta­ble to com­plete a new on­col­o­gy plat­form deal

Take­da is spend­ing big to add a new piece to their on­col­o­gy R&D puz­zle.

This morn­ing the glob­al phar­ma com­pa­ny picked up an al­liance with Turn­stone Bi­o­log­ics, which has been build­ing a new vi­ral im­munother­a­py plat­form to com­ple­ment its work on on­colyt­ics, part­nered with Ab­b­Vie for the past 2 years.

Dubbed the vac­cinia virus plat­form out of a lab in Ot­tawa, R&D chief Mike Burgess de­scribes it as a “high­ly se­lec­tive virus as a con­se­quence of en­gi­neer­ing, ex­quis­ite­ly se­lec­tive for can­cer cells in con­trast to nor­mal cells.” And it can be used to de­liv­er a pay­load of trans­genes for Flt3 lig­and, an­ti-CT­LA-4 an­ti­body, and IL-12 cy­tokine that repli­cate in cells.

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