Relationship Will Leverage Be The Match BioTherapies’ Expertise and Expansive Donor Registry to Provide Healthy Donor Cells in Support of Atara’s Allogeneic T-cell Platform
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. & SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Jan. 6, 2022 – Be The Match BioTherapies® and Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATRA), today announced an extension of their collaboration to provide high-quality healthy donor cells for Atara’s off-the-shelf T-cell immunotherapy platform for patients with cancer and autoimmune diseases.
This multi-year partnership leverages the capabilities of Be The Match BioTherapies to source healthy donor cells from the Be The Match Registry® with over 22 million genetically diverse human leukocyte antigen (HLA) immune profiles.
“Atara and Be The Match BioTherapies share an aspiration to serve every patient, and this partnership will allow us to deliver treatments to the patient populations that our organization was founded to help,” said Chris McClain, Senior Vice President, Sales and Business Development at Be The Match BioTherapies. “We are proud to provide a consistent supply of high-quality, compliant, and consented HLA-specific starting material to support Atara’s tabelecleucel (tab-cel®) program, including the ongoing Phase 3 ALLELE study, and its other pipeline candidates.”
Since 2016, Be The Match BioTherapies has been a strategic supplier to Atara by providing the cellular starting material, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, from healthy donors with targeted HLA haplotypes for further manufacture and cryopreservation as inventory ready to be delivered to patients in need in just a few days. Cutting-edge bioinformatic insights into HLA genetics have supported Atara’s clinical programs by ensuring that for each product, an inventory of different manufactured lots is available for partial matching to patient HLA profiles to support efficacy and safety. Be The Match BioTherapies’ regulatory expertise ensures the collection of donor cells that meet FDA and varying international regulations, broadening the potential use of the therapies.
“With our recent EU regulatory marketing authorization application submission for tabelecleucel, the first-ever off-the-shelf allogeneic T-cell therapy to be reviewed by any regulatory agency in the world, we are one step closer to bringing this potentially transformative treatment to patients,” said Matt Yedwabnick, Vice President, Global Supply Chain at Atara. “Our ability to deliver investigational medicines, including tab-cel, is reliant on sourcing high-quality healthy donor cells. Be The Match BioTherapies’ capabilities have been instrumental in identifying and supplying the starting materials to produce our multiple allogeneic T-cell and CAR-T immunotherapies in development.”
About Be The Match BioTherapies
Be The Match BioTherapies is the only cell and gene therapy solutions provider with customizable services to support the end-to-end cell therapy supply chain. Backed by the industry-leading experience of the National Marrow Donor Program®/Be The Match®, and a research partnership with the CIBMTR® (Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research®), the organization designs solutions that advance the development of cell and gene therapies across the globe.
Be The Match BioTherapies is dedicated to accelerating patient access to life-saving cell and gene therapies by providing high-quality cellular source material from the Be The Match Registry®, the world’s most diverse registry of more than 22 million potential blood stem cell donors. Through established relationships with apheresis, marrow collection, and transplant centers worldwide, the organization develops, onboards, trains, and manages expansive collection networks to advance cell therapies. Be The Match BioTherapies uses a proven infrastructure consisting of regulatory compliance and managed logistics experts and cell therapy supply chain case managers to transport and deliver regulatory-compliant life-saving therapies across the globe successfully. Through the CIBMTR, Be The Match BioTherapies extends services beyond the cell therapy supply chain to include long-term follow-up tracking for the first two FDA-approved CAR-T therapies.
For more information, visit www.BeTheMatchBioTherapies.com or follow Be The Match BioTherapies on LinkedIn or Twitter.
About Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc.
Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc. (@Atarabio) is a pioneer in T-cell immunotherapy leveraging its novel allogeneic EBV T-cell platform to develop transformative therapies for patients with serious diseases including solid tumors, hematologic cancers and autoimmune disease. With our lead program in Phase 3 clinical development, Atara is the most advanced allogeneic T-cell immunotherapy company and intends to rapidly deliver off-the-shelf treatments to patients with high unmet medical need. Our platform leverages the unique biology of EBV T cells and has the capability to treat a wide range of EBV-associated diseases, or other serious diseases through incorporation of engineered CARs (chimeric antigen receptors) or TCRs (T-cell receptors). Atara is applying this one platform, which does not require TCR or HLA gene editing, to create a robust pipeline including: tab-cel® in Phase 3 development for Epstein-Barr virus-driven post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease (EBV+ PTLD) and other EBV-driven diseases; ATA188, a T-cell immunotherapy targeting EBV antigens as a potential treatment for multiple sclerosis; and multiple next-generation chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) immunotherapies for both solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. Improving patients’ lives is our mission and we will never stop working to bring transformative therapies to those in need. Atara is headquartered in South San Francisco and our leading-edge research, development and manufacturing facility is based in Thousand Oaks, California. For additional information about the company, please visit atarabio.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Atara Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains or may imply “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. For example, forward-looking statements include statements regarding tab-cel®: the timing of, and Atara’s plans for, and potential decision by, the EMA regarding the MAA submission for EBV+ patients with PTLD, Atara’s ability to successfully advance the development of its programs, the potential benefits to Atara as a result of the collaboration with Be The Match BioTherapies, and Be the Match BioTherapies’ ability to supply donor cells to Atara, including the characteristics thereof. Because such statements deal with future events and are based on Atara’s current expectations, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties and actual results, performance or achievements of Atara could differ materially from those described in or implied by the statements in this press release. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with the costly and time-consuming pharmaceutical product development process and the uncertainty of clinical success; the COVID-19 pandemic, which may significantly impact (i) our business, research, clinical development plans and operations, including our operations in South San Francisco and Southern California and at our clinical trial sites, as well as the business or operations of our third-party manufacturer, contract research organizations or other third parties with whom we conduct business, (ii) our ability to access capital, and (iii) the value of our common stock; the sufficiency of Atara’s cash resources and need for additional capital; and other risks and uncertainties affecting Atara’s and its development programs, including those discussed in Atara’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including in the “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” sections of the Company’s most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and subsequent filings and in the documents incorporated by reference therein. Except as otherwise required by law, Atara disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances or otherwise.
Media Contacts:
Be The Match BioTherapies:
Bonnie Quintanilla, [email protected]
(877) 887-7611
Atara Biotherapeutics:
Alex Chapman
(805) 456-4772
