China's Luye Pharma Group Ltd. entered a collaboration and license deal with privately held Elpis Biopharmaceuticals Corp. to develop novel anticancer therapies.
The partnership will focus on discovery and development of dual-target chimeric antigen receptor T-cells, or CAR-T cell, therapies and biologics — medicines derived from living organisms.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Under the deal, Boston-based biotech Elpis will develop the CAR-T candidates while Hong Kong-listed and Yantai, China-based Luye Pharma will be responsible for developing and commercializing the therapies in the Asian country.
The agreement builds upon a 2017 immuno-oncology and immune-cell therapy collaboration between the companies. The most advanced CAR-T cell therapy drug under the collaboration is in a preclinical study stage, Luye Pharma said in the press release.
CAR-T cell therapies work by manipulating a patient's own disease-fighting T cells and then infusing them back into the body to fight blood cancers.

