{"id":83230,"date":"2026-06-13T13:28:45","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T13:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/83230\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T13:28:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T13:28:45","slug":"roche-inks-1-5b-poseida-buyout-to-land-off-the-shelf-car-ts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/83230\/","title":{"rendered":"Roche inks $1.5B Poseida buyout to land off-the-shelf CAR-Ts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roche has\u00a0struck<\/a> a $1.5 billion deal to buy Poseida Therapeutics. The takeover will establish off-the-shelf cell therapies, which Roche has said can democratize CAR-Ts, as a new core capability at the drugmaker.<\/p>\n

Poseida\u00a0partnered<\/a> with Roche in 2022, accepting a $110 million upfront in return for licenses on two cell therapy candidates and options on other prospects. The deal, which included $6 billion in milestones, moved Roche deeper into cell therapies. Roche stayed on the sidelines in the early years of excitement about CAR-T but has struck deals to build out a cell therapy presence in recent years.<\/p>\n

The Poseida takeover, which was announced alongside a major\u00a0setback<\/a> for the Swiss drugmaker\u2019s TIGIT program, marks a step up in Roche\u2019s pursuit of the cell therapy market. Roche has agreed to buy the biotech for $9 a share in cash. A further $4 a share is tied to the achievement of certain milestones. The total equity value of the deal is $1.5 billion.<\/p>\n

The outlay will give Roche control of a pipeline of cell therapies and the underlying technology platform. Roche already has licenses to Poseida\u2019s two lead blood cancer programs. The biotech\u00a0moved<\/a> a CAR-T cell therapy against BCMA into the clinic in multiple myeloma 2022 and\u00a0began<\/a> testing a CD19xCD20 prospect in humans this year. Roche also has an option on Poseida\u2019s CD70-directed acute myeloid leukemia asset.<\/p>\n

Buying Poseida will give Roche full ownership of those assets, plus a BCMAxCD19 prospect that Poseida is developing in multiple myeloma and autoimmune diseases and a clutch of solid tumor candidates. The solid tumor work, which includes a collaboration with Astellas, is led by a MUC1-C candidate that\u00a0moved<\/a> into the clinic in 2022.<\/p>\n

Other companies are aiming cell therapies at the same targets but Roche is betting Poseida\u2019s nonviral platform will set its candidates apart. The platform is designed to generate off-the-shelf CAR-T therapies that are rich in T stem cell memory cells, a long-lived, self-replicating cell type that Poseida identified as a way to improve safety and efficacy.<\/p>\n

Charles Fuchs, M.D., global head of oncology and hematology drug development at Genentech and Roche, set out the case for the platform at the company\u2019s Pharma Day event in September. Fuchs said around 20% of patients eligible for CAR-T receive cell therapy. Poseida\u2019s donor-derived healthy stem cell memory T cells could allow Roche to \u201ctruly scale CAR-T therapy to a much broader population,\u201d Fuchs said.<\/p>\n

The Roche exec also highlighted Poseida’s gene editing tools, including \u201cpiggyback insertion technology, which allows for the delivery of multiple CARs in a single step with great efficiency and without the need of viral delivery systems.\u201d Another Poseida technology \u201callows for multiple knock-in and knock-outs\u201d to prevent graft-versus-host and host-versus-graft responses, Fuchs said.<\/p>\n

Poseida has struggled to get investors excited about the technology. The biotech went public in 2020 and briefly traded above $15 a share. Since then, Poseida\u2019s share price has fallen more than 80% to close at $2.86 before news of the Roche deal broke.<\/p>\n

Investors drove the biotech\u2019s share price up more than 200% in premarket trading. At $9.20, the stock is trading above the upfront offered by Roche but well below the price including success-based payments.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roche has\u00a0struck a $1.5 billion deal to buy Poseida Therapeutics. The takeover will establish off-the-shelf cell therapies, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[124],"tags":[42704,42233,1115,42064,41960,3772,9275,3343,42703,134],"class_list":["post-83230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-roche","tag-allogeneic-cell-therapy","tag-biologics","tag-biotech","tag-car-t","tag-cell-gene-therapy","tag-deals","tag-fierce-biotech-homepage","tag-mergers-and-acquisitions","tag-poseida-therapeutics","tag-roche"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116743038736403070","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}