The London-based biotech struck an agreement with Blackstone Life Sciences for a collaboration and financing deal that will see the latter company provide $250m (€215m) of investment.
According to the partners, the capital injection will be used to support the development of Autolus’ CD19 CAR-T cell investigational therapy product candidate, obecabtagene autoleucel (obe-cel).
The funding is broken down into two separate blocks, with $150m going towards the financing of obe-cel development and commercialization, with $50m of this being paid upon completion of the transaction and the rest of the sum being payable on development and regulatory milestones.
The rest of the $100m of funding will see Blackstone purchase Autolus’ American Depositary Shares. As part of the deal, Blackstone will be able to nominate a member to Autolus’ board of directors.
On the same day as the funding announcement, Autolus was also busy breaking ground on its new manufacturing facility that will be built in Stevenage, UK.
The 70,000-square-foot location will provide commercial launch capacity for obe-cel, with existing clinical trial manufacturing capacity transitioning from the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult facility, which is also located in Stevenage, upon completion. Once operational, the site will provide approximately 2,000 batches per year.
UK investment continues
Blackstone stated that it has invested more than $18bn into 44 separate investments on UK shores over the last 10 years, making it the UK’s biggest foreign investor in that period.