Adicet Bio, Inc., a biotechnology company discovering and developing first-in-class allogeneic gamma delta T cell therapies for cancer and other diseases, and Twist Bioscience Corporation (NASDAQ: TWST), a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, today announced a collaboration to accelerate the discovery of gamma delta T cell therapies against five undisclosed targets. The companies will work together to engineer immune cells with fully human chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and T-cell receptors (TCRs) directed to disease-specific cell surface antigens. This precise and targeted engagement is designed to provide a superior potential to facilitate the recognition and killing of tumour cells.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Twist will leverage its proprietary single chain fragment variable (scFv) and VHH (nanobody) technologies from its Library of Libraries to discover unique target-specific binders. These targeting technologies will enable Adicet Bio’s engineering and discovery of unique CARs used in the generation of novel gamma delta CAR T cell products. Twist will receive an upfront technology license fee for each program as well as clinical and regulatory milestones and royalties for any product resulting from the selected targets.

“We are excited to leverage Twist’s proprietary antibody discovery capabilities to potentially rapidly identify and optimize unique antibodies against key targets to further enhance our pipeline, both in cancer and other diseases,” said Chen Schor, President and Chief Executive Officer of Adicet. “We’ve selected five key targets where we believe our expertise in gamma delta T cell therapies could be augmented with Twist’s ability to identify highly potent, specific antibodies and look forward to a robust partnership.”

“There is huge potential in using gamma delta T cells for the treatment of a wide range of cancers, and Adicet is leading the development in this field,” commented Emily M. Leproust, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience. “We look forward to partnering with Adicet to translate these target-engagement technologies into next-generation off-the-shelf, CAR-T therapies and to potentially accelerate the treatment of patients with cancer.”